SAO PAULO — Brazil’s government said on Wednesday it will invest $75 million to upgrade the BR-319 highway that cuts through the Amazon rainforest, and announced a new environmental protection plan aimed at limiting the project’s impact on the world’s largest tropical forest.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, speaking at a ceremony in Amazonas state, said the road would be “the most modern in the world” from an environmental standpoint. “Any foreigner who comes here to weigh in on the climate issue, we will show what we’ve done here,” Lula said, according to the Associated Press. Environment Minister João Paulo Capobianco accompanied the president at the event.
The BR-319, inaugurated in 1976, runs for hundreds of miles through the rainforest, linking the northern states of Amazonas and Rondonia to the rest of Brazil. The highway remains largely unpaved and reaches Manaus, a city of more than 2 million people. The road follows the Madeira River, a major Amazon tributary that has suffered from prolonged droughts disrupting cargo and passenger transport.
Environmental groups have warned that paving the highway would accelerate deforestation, opening remote stretches of forest to illegal logging, cattle ranching and land speculation, and worsen climate change. The Lula administration’s decision to pair the road investment with environmental safeguards appeared aimed at countering those concerns, though specifics of the plan were not immediately disclosed.
The highway project has been a recurring flashpoint in Brazil’s struggle to balance economic development with protection of the Amazon. Lula, who returned to the presidency in 2023 pledging to defend the forest while also expanding infrastructure, said the environmental plan would make the road an international model.