Roads through the Amazon

It always saddens me when I hear of potentially destructive acts in the Amazon. The fight for the rainforests have been going on for literally my entire life, and are some of the earliest memories I have of wanting to be environmentally active. Unfortunately, the fight continues today, and in many ways the Amazon is much worse now than it was before. Deforestation continues on a large scale, economic interests outweigh environmental concerns, and thousands of species have no doubt been lost to us without even our discovery of them.

Now, in the name of economic development, the governments of Peru and Brazil have agreed to stretch a length of road across pristine forest to connect the two countries and provide access to Pacific Ocean ports in Peru to Brazil. You can read information on this proposal here in a WorldWatch blog.

The traditional debate comes down to the environment versus economic development. Unfortunately, given our current systems and institutions, the environment most often comes out on the losing end. There is, I believe, no doubt to the truth that building a road connecting these two cities will bring short-term economic benefits to the people in the region, as well as open up new "development" to people coming from outside the region. My personal doubt is to the value of these economic benefits, and how we determine what is truly valuable.

Governments are pressured into making decisions like these for numerous reasons, but one of the largest is that they must show "economic growth." I've already posted once about the need to escape from GDP as a measure of economic growth and health, so I won't bother doing it here again. Suffice it to say that if governments did not feel the need to demonstrate X percentage of GDP growth each year, we'd have better decision-making and policies.

No, instead, what I will state in this particular post is probably a bit more damning to governments engaged in this type of growth. That is, they have failed their peoples elsewhere. From everything I have read and seen, life in the Amazon is not easy. Clear-cutting of rain-forests for things like agriculture is a short-term game. Farmers are forced to constantly pick up and move every few years once the soil becomes unproductive. Yet, there is no doubt in my mind that as the road opens, more and more farmers will come streaming into the area to continue their lives in perpetual nomadic poverty. Is this the fault of the farmers, or the fault of a government that has not come up with creative, innovative, and positive impact programs elsewhere in the country to provide for healthy and meaningful lives?