Portuguese Language and Brazilian Studies, GIST 177, LAC 177, PORT 177: Interoceanic Highway

Our study region . . . covers Madre de Dios in Peru, Acre in Brazil, and Pando in Bolivia. This tri-national frontier is being integrated into the global economy via the paving of the Inter-Oceanic Highway which links the region to ports in the Atlantic and Pacific . . .

As development occurs, the converted forest areas saturate close to roads, resulting in increasing rates of deforestation at further distances and patch consolidation of clearings over time.

Deforestation and resulting landscape fragmentation are important concerns in many tropical areas. Deforestation is a complex process with many potential feedback loops, many of which are ignored in models that attempt to interpolate forest loss based on past deforestation rates. In addition, most ecological studies of the impacts of deforestation have focused on landscapes that are already fragmented. These studies ignore the fact that edge effects, such as anthropogenic fire, reach their maximum well before habitat connectivity is lost and may create positive feedbacks that result in further fragmentation. We developed a simple model to explore the potential influence of edge effects on fragmentation rates and used remotely sensed data from the MAP (Madre de Dios, Acre, and Pando) region of the Brazilian Amazon to parameterize the relationships of interest.

Few ornithologists have conducted research in the southwestern Amazonian state of Acre, Brazil. Threats and opportunities associated with completion of the Brazil-Peru Interoceanic Highway provide impetus to increase understanding of 1) the distribution, status, and natural history of rare and restricted-range birds, 2) human-wildlife conflicts, and 3) interest in ecotourism within Acre. I conducted point-count surveys, recorded opportunistic encounters, and estimated occupancy for the globally threatened, near-threatened, and restricted-range birds of eastern Acre.

It is obvious that roads facilitate access to natural resources. It is less clear, however, why the "spatial structure" of road networks varies among locations in tropical forest frontiers, which bears implications for the "spatial geometry" of forest fragmentation and the sustainability of resource-based development. We present a comparative analysis of the processes behind distinct road network structures and forest fragmentation geometries in two sites of the Brazilian Amazon. Contrasts in the two case histories occurred due to biophysical environments, planning and initial settlement, and subsequent change dynamics. These divergences provide the basis for an explanation of distinct road network structures and fragmentation patterns, with implications for tropical forest conservation and sustainable frontier development via policies and grassroots initiatives for effective "road governance".

Here's proof that direct action works: After some 2,000 Peruvians blocked roads and held mass protests for 36 days straight--from mid-May through June--the country's government cancelled plans for a 2,000-megawatt dam on the Inambari River, a major Amazon tributary.

The dam was to be built by the Brazilian EGASUR consortium (Southern Amazon Electrical Generation Company) at the corner of Puno, Cusco, and Madre de Dios states, 186 miles from the border with Brazil. It would have been the largest of six hydroelectric dams planned as part of a deal between Peru and Brazil for the generation of 6,000 megawatts of electricity.

This article reviews the main themes--we are here; this is who we are; insurgent citizenship; Amazon Nation--elaborated in this collection of papers on new Amazonian geographies, and extends their implications to ideas about governmentality and regional identity. The article contextualizes the papers in this issue through understanding Amazonia's role in the structuring of the contemporary Brazilian state through resistance to conventional modernist authoritarian development planning, and the creation of current places and politics through the assertion of new forms of citizenship, identity, governance and the rise of socio-environmentalisms as part of a new "statecraft" from below. Modern Amazonia has reasserted itself by developing a set of alternative epistemes and practices which can be seen, in their language and ideologies, to invoke the idea of the "Amazon nation."

The Malvinas natural-gas plant might seem the ultimate insult to a largely unspoiled tropical paradise, particularly for a lifelong conservationist such as Babbitt, who served as Secretary of the Interior — responsible for managing much of the United States' federal land and natural resources — under US President Bill Clinton from 1993 until 2001. But where others see blight, Babbitt sees a vision of the future. He looks past the pipes and pollution and focuses instead on what makes this project stand out: seen from the sky, Malvinas is an island of industrial activity in a sea of trees. There are no roads into the site; everything that enters or leaves Malvinas, including gas, rubbish, food and people, does so by plane, boat or underground pipeline.

This article presents a comparative analysis of two recently proposed trans-boundary highway projects, the Trans-Texas Corridor from Mexico through Texas to Oklahoma in the USA, and the Inter-Oceanic Highway in the southwestern Amazon where Bolivia, Brazil and Peru meet. The analysis focuses on the similar political contexts, justifications and funding models, as well as the contrasting political responses and implementation outcomes. The findings reveal important differences in the two cases, even among their ostensibly similar aspects, which are necessary to provide an adequate explanation as to why social mobilization stopped one project but not the other. The analysis bears implications for the social-political study of trans-boundary infrastructure as an instrument of economic globalization.

Economic globalization manifests in landscapes through regional integration initiatives involving trans-boundary infrastructure. While the relationships of roads, accessibility and land cover are well-understood, they have rarely been considered across borders in national frontier regions. We therefore pursue an analysis of infrastructure connectivity and land cover change in the tri-national frontier of the southwestern Amazon where Bolivia, Brazil and Peru meet, and where the Inter-Oceanic Highway has recently been paved. We integrate satellite, survey, climate and other data for a sample of rural communities that differ in terms of highway paving across the tri-national frontier. We employ a suite of explanatory variables tied to road paving and other factors that vary both across and within the three sides of the frontier in order to model their importance for deforestation.