Amazon Rainforest Cut Down to build a highway for Cop Climate Summit

A new four -lane highway, cut tens of thousands of acres of protected tropical forest of the Amazon, is being built for the COP30 climate summit in the Brazilian city of Belem.

It aims to facilitate traffic to the city that will host more than 50,000 people – including world leaders – at the November conference.

The government of the state appears the “sustainable” powers of the highway, but some locals and environmentalists are outraged by the environmental impact.

The Amazon plays a vital role in the absorption of carbon to the world and the provision of biodiversity, and many say that this deforestation contradicts the very purpose of the climate summit.

On a partially built road, lush towers of tropical forests on both sides – a reminder of what has ever been there. The logs are accumulated high in the clean land, which extends more than 13 km (8 miles) through the tropical forests in Belem.

The copiers and machines are carved through the forest floor, straining over the wetlands to invade the road that will cut through a protected area.

Claudio Verequete lives about 200 meters from where the road will be. He used the income from retracting Asets from trees that once occupied space.

“Everything was destroyed,” he says, gesturing in the meadow.

“Our harvest is already shortened. We no longer have this income to support our family.”

He says he has not received compensation from the government of the state and is currently relies on savings.

He is worried that building this time will lead to more deforestation in the future, now that the area is more accessible to the business.

“Our fear is that one day someone will come here and say,” Here’s some money. We need this area to build a gas station or build a warehouse. “And then we’ll have to leave.

“We were born and raised here in the community. Where will we go?”

Its community will not be connected to the road, given its walls on both sides.

“For us who live on the side of the highway, there will be no benefits. There will be benefits for the trucks that will pass. If someone becomes ill and has to go to the center of Belem, we will not be able to use it.”

The road leaves two excluded areas of the protected forest. Scientists are concerned that it will fragment the ecosystem and disrupt the movement of the wild.

Prof. Sylvia Sardinha is a veterinarian and researcher at the University Hospital for Animals, looking at the place of the new highway.

She and her team rehabilitate wild animals with injuries caused mainly by humans or vehicles.

Once healed, they put them back into the wild – something that she says will be more difficult if there is a highway on their threshold.

“There has been a loss since the deforestation.

“We will lose an area to release these animals back into the wild, the natural environment of these species,” she said.

“Ground animals will no longer be able to cross the other side, reducing areas in which they can live and multiply.”

The Brazilian president and minister of the environment say this will be a historic summit because it is “a cop in the Amazon, not a cop for the Amazon.”

The president says the meeting will allow him to focus on the Amazon needs, to show the forest of the world, and to present what the federal government did to protect it.

But Prof. Sardinha says that although these conversations happen “at a very high level, among businessmen and civil servants,” those who live in the Amazon “are not heard.”

The State Government of Para has announced the idea of ​​this highway, known as Avenida Liberdade, back in 2012, but it has been repeatedly delayed because of environmental concerns.

Now numerous infrastructure projects have been resurrected or approved for the city preparation for the COP summit.

Adler Silveira, the State Government Secretary of the Infrastructure, listed this highway as one of 30 projects that are happening in the city to “prepare” and “modernize it”, so “we can have a inheritance for the population and the important thing -to serve people for the COP30 in the best way”.

Speaking to the BBC, he said it was a “sustainable highway” and “important intervention for mobility”.

He added that there would be wildnies to allow animals to cross, bicycle lanes and sunlight. New hotels are also being created and the port is being reconstructed so that cruise ships can be tidy up there to accommodate unnecessary visitors.

The Brazil federal government has invested over $ 81 million (62 million British pounds) to expand the airport capacity from Seven to 14 million passengers. A new city park of 500,000 square meters, Parque Da Cidade, is under construction. It will include green spaces, restaurants, sports complex and other facilities that the public can be used afterwards.

Some business owners in the huge Ver-O-Peso open air market agree that this development will bring opportunities for the city.

“The city as a whole is improving, it is being repaired and many people visit from other places. This means that I can sell more and win more,” says Dalchi Cardoso da Silva, who runs a leather shoe stall.

He says this is necessary because when he was young, Belem was “beautiful, well maintained, well -cared for,” but since then he was “abandoned” and “neglected” with “little interest in the ruling class”.

Joao Alexander Trindade da Silva, who sells the Amazon herbal remedies on the market, admits that all construction work can create problems, but believes that the future impact will be worth it.

“We hope that the discussions are not only on paper and there are real actions. And the measures, the decisions taken, are really applied in practice so that the planet can breathe a little better, so that the population in the future has a slightly cleaner air.”

This will also be the hope of world leaders who decide to attend the COP30 summit.

The check is considered whether the flying of thousands of them around the world and the infrastructure needed for their household undermines the cause.