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This article reveals the poor economic viability and high environmental and social costs of most planned road projects in the Brazilian Amazon, and identifies several offering relatively high economic benefits combined with low impacts.
The rapidly expanding network of roads into the Amazon is permanently altering the world’s largest tropical forest. Most of the road projects proposed lack rigorous impact assessments or even basic economic justifications.
This study analyses the expected environmental, social and economic impacts of 75 projects, totaling 12 000 km of planned road, in the region.
It finds that all projects, although in different magnitudes, will negatively impact the environment. Some 45% will also generate economic losses, even without accounting for social and environmental externalities.
The study finds that canceling economically unjustified projects would avoid 1.1 million hectares of deforestation and US$ 7.6 billion in wasted funding for development projects.
For projects that exceed a basic economic viability threshold, the authors identify those that offer better economic returns in combination with lower social and environmental impacts.
They find that a smaller set of carefully chosen projects could deliver 77% of the economic benefits at a cost of only 10% of the environmental and social damage, showing that it is possible to have efficient trade-off decisions informed by legitimately determined national priorities.
Tool / Trase enables governments, companies and others to address the environmental impacts of supply chains.
Project / A review of the state of implementation of Objectives 6 (clean water and sanitation) and 13 (climate action) of the 2030 Agenda in Amazon Basin countries.
Project / This project provides a general vision for evaluating the impacts of fires in the Chiquitania Region by integrating water resources into restoration strategies.
Perspective / Trase’s co-directors write about the benefits and limitations of Trase data in assisting companies and governments in their efforts to implement the EUDR.
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