Amazon rainforest, deforestation will increase fivefold due to a road

The Brazilian government wants asphalting 870 kilometers of Amazonia, at a road that crosses the heart of the great rainforest. The Brazilian environmental protection authority has in fact granted a first permit for the asphalting of thehighway Br-319a decision that threatens to significantly increase deforestation of the area, already brought to its highest levels since 2008 by the government of President Jair Bolsonaro.

The Br-319 was inaugurated in the 1970s by the Brazilian military dictatorship (towards which Bolsonaro has always expressed his own admiration). Soon, however, the highway – which connects the largest Amazonian city, Manaus, to the rest of Brazil – deteriorated due to the climatic conditions of the rainforest.

Today the route is largely made up of dirt and during the approximately six months of the rainy season it turns for the most part into a impassable mud strip. A condition of apparent discomfort, but which actually contributes to making access to the most remote and uncontaminated areas of the forest more difficult, protecting them from illegal deforestation activitieswhich according to scientists from the Space Institute of Brazil (Inpe) accelerated under the Bolsonaro administration.

According to the Inpe data, reported by the site Renewables, In the first quarter of 2022 alone, about 941 square kilometers of Amazon rainforest disappeared, an area five times larger than that of the city of Milan. According to scientists and environmentalists, paving the road would make it easier to reach large areas of the rainforest and intensify the illegal destruction of trees. According to a study reported by the Guardianthe project deforestation in the area would increase fivefold by 2030leading to the disappearance of an area of ​​pristine forest as large as the state of Florida.

The Amazon has a great absorption capacity of carbon dioxide, a vital function for the planet that it allows to slow down the pace of global warming. Climate scientists say that without the rainforest’s billions of trees, the rise in global temperatures is set to grow exponentially over the next few years. Currently, experts fear that the Amazon is near a point of no return, past which the largest rainforest on Earth could get annoyedturning into one savannah. The extreme consequence would be the loss of an irreplaceable ecosystem and a fundamental factor in global climate dynamics.