Socialist President of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced on Wednesday that his government is allocating $75 million for the rehabilitation of BR-319, a highway cutting through a “sensitive” part of the Amazon Rainforest that has not been usable since 1988.
Lula, a radical leftist running for a fourth term in office this year, acknowledged widespread opposition to the project from environmentalists and others concerned with the status of the rainforest, but claimed the finished product would be among the world’s greenest infrastructure projects.
The Amazon Rainforest, the largest in the world, is often referred to as the “planet’s lungs” or “lungs of the world” for its prodigious ability to produce oxygen, given the expansive amount and variety of plant life residing in it. As a unique biome, the Amazon has also become a cause celebre for many concerned with the environmental health of the planet and, as a result, attracts attention from interested public personalities.
While celebrities such as Mark Ruffalo, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Madonna have expressed outrage about wildfires and pollution in the Amazon during conservative presidential administrations, at press time no high-profile Anglosphere personalities have condemned Lula for pursuing the Amazonian highway project.
Lula made his announcement in the Brazilian state of Amazonas on Wednesday, where he met with some laborers on the project as well as separately promoting a major public housing project.
“We studied the environmental question a lot. What’s left? Nothing else is left. What’s left is to start building now,” he declared.
Lula reportedly acknowledged that carving a highway through largely untouched Amazon terrain – even if that highway had once been built and reclaimed by nature – was an endeavor that could cause environmental concerns.
“It’s not just any road. It is situated in a very sensitive place in the Amazon,” he said at an event announcing the project. “To authorize us to build this road, we have been discussing for months which is the safest environmental security system.”
He nonetheless insisted that his government would proceed with the project using “the most environmental care taken in any country in the world” and that it would be an economic boon to the region worth the risk.
“The famous BR-319, which has been an agony for many people for over 36 years – this highway will be the best situated highway environmentally on planet Earth,” he declared.
BR-319 was conceived as a highway connecting the Amazonian city of Manaus, typically only accessible via plane or boat, to Porto Velho. It was initially built between 1968 and 1973 and opened that year, though leaders described the debut as an “experimental” one. The highway was closed in 1988 after falling into disrepair. What followed was decades of legal disputes surrounding whether such development was allowed by Brazilian law so deep in the rainforest, as well as concerns about the viability of the project at all.
“On the one hand,” explained the Brazilian newspaper O Globo this week, “local authorities support paving the road, which is over 850 kilometers long and is Manaus’ only land connection to the rest of the country. On the other hand, environmental organizations are calling for full environmental licensing.”
Lula da Silva is ending his third term as the nation’s president, pursuing a fourth in October’s presidential election. The time period between his second and third terms was marked by widespread accusations of corruption involving infrastructure projects that culminated in him being convicted, on multiple appeals, of having misappropriated funds from infrastructure projects, primarily through the state oil company Petrobras. His conviction was part of a much larger police investigation known as “Operation Car Wash” that implicated dozens of politicians from various parties in kickback schemes involving overpriced infrastructure projects.
Lula nonetheless won the presidency in the hard-fought 2022 presidential election against conservative incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, who faced outsized international criticism for being president during regular seasons of wildfires in the Amazon. In 2019, the first year of his presidency, Bolsonaro faced a torrent of accusations of deliberately damaging the Amazon Rainforest from the likes of Mark Ruffalo, a Hollywood actor who went on to endorse Lula, and Leonardo DiCaprio.
Many celebrities spread misinformation, in one particular instance using a photo taken by a photographer who died in 2003 and using it as evidence that Bolsonaro, who took office in 2019, was responsible for an increase in forest fires. Also entering the fray was French President Emmanuel Macron, whose country possesses land in South America via French Guiana and, as such, is technically an Amazonian country. Bolsonaro condemned Macron for insulting him and his administration mocked France for failing to prevent the 2019 Notre Dame fire.
In 2024, a year and a half into Lula’s third term, the Amazon began suffering the worst fire season in two decades, attracting little attention from the international left. According to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE), the 2024 fires were on par or only better than the wildfire seasons in 2004, 2007, and 2010, all years within Lula’s presidency.