The construction and even renovation of access roads to the most remote locations in the Amazon, which guarantee essential logistical support for the economy, almost always come up against two obstacles equivalent to the size of the region: environmental preservation and the safety of indigenous populations. The alternative of replacing it with rail, a solution proposed by environmentalists for the connection between Manaus and Porto Velho, which crosses a national park and an indigenous reserve, is resisted by the initial cost and the geographical difficulties involved in implementing the project.
The obvious, which is waterway transport, would depend on investments in cargo ports, passenger terminals and even signaling systems that demarcate the waterways. The air modal offers perspectives, but, according to specialists, it faces restrictions of capacity and operational cost in a country with underdeveloped regional aviation.
“Priorities one, two, three and four should be the waterway. Only later could one think of railroads in strategic axes with less environmental impact than the highway, which opens up a lot of space for land grabbing and exploitation by logging companies”, says Virgílio Vianna, superintendent of the Sustainable Amazon Foundation. “When talking about highways, the impacts are very big, but even railways are complicated works to be implemented”, says José Hélio Fernandes, president of the National Association of Cargo Transport and Logistics (NTC).
“Sustainable development advocates a tripod: economic, social and environmental. Any one of the three overlapping the other breaks the balance. Today the Amazon is not integrated into Brazil. From the point of view of infrastructure, it barely reached the 20th century”, says doctor in transport engineering Augusto Rocha.
Far beyond the environmental debate, the interiorization of highways is considered important for the economic development of the region. The creation of an alternative multimodal route to the North-South railroad in Tocantins could represent savings of up to 30% in freight and would serve to transport soy production from agricultural frontiers to the ports of Pará and Maranhão.
The recovery of BR-230, the Transamazônica Highway, with more than 4 thousand kilometers, connecting the cities of Cabedelo, in Paraíba, to Lábrea, in Amazonas, is defended by Augusto Rocha since it adopted an environmental management model. The works on the BR-319, between Manaus and Porto Velho, are at a standstill awaiting environmental licensing from the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Natural Resources (Ibama), according to the website of the National Department of Transport Infrastructure (Dnit).
The conclusion of the paving of the 3.467 kilometers of the BR-163, which connects Tenente Portela, in Rio Grande do Sul, to Santarém, in Pará, could reduce the route between Manaus and São Paulo by two or three days and allow part of the soy from the Midwest does not need to go down to the ports in the South region to be shipped to the foreign market.
The construction of airports in the micro-regions of Amazonas, using runways on the river for hydroplanes and runways on the ground for conventional aircraft, with at least one terminal of each type in all the micro-regions of the State, would be an important effort for regional integration. The idea is that the channels of the larger rivers also have an airport every 600 kilometers to allow air traffic to the more developed states.
The construction of the second runway at Eduardo Gomes Airport would be important to ensure movement in case an aircraft faces mechanical problems on the only runway that currently exists in the terminal.
“The logistical problem is very serious in the Amazon”, says Virgílio Vianna, from the Fundação da Amazônia Sustentável. “The multimodality of transport is what still supports the flow of production in the region, but it is important to reconcile environmentally and economically satisfactory alternatives”, says Fernandes, from NTC.
“There is a dubious equation when it comes to the Amazon: on the one hand you want development, but everyone with a minimum of awareness also wants the preservation of the forest. The challenge is to achieve both, and sustainable development seems to be a good way to overcome the dilemma”, says Professor Rocha.
Source: Valor Econômico
By: Paulo Vasconcellos
