- Brazil’s government has signed a 30-year contract to privatize a section of the BR-364 highway, a key part of its plan to create an overland corridor to Peru to streamline commodity exports to China.
- Critics warn that expanding the highway into well-preserved rainforest risks repeating its history by attracting illegal loggers and land grabbers, a pattern that previously cleared vast areas for agriculture.
- The road is key to a new infrastructure initiative aimed at streamlining South American trade routes to China by creating a direct link between Brazil’s agribusiness heartland and Pacific ports in Peru, Ecuador and Colombia.
The BR-364 federal highway triggered one of the largest deforestation drives in the history of the Brazilian Amazon. Built in the early 1960s through the rainforest, it links Cuiabá, capital of Mato Grosso state, to Porto Velho, capital of Rondônia state, and was the first overland route to Brazil’s westernmost region, ending its long-standing geographic isolation. Since then, the landscape along the road has been reshaped by human settlement, with large swaths of forest cleared for commodity production.
This process was driven by Brazil’s military dictatorship from 1964-1985, which promoted the occupation of the Amazon Rainforest as a defense of national territory from “foreign invaders” — widely considered a conspiracy theory by historians — under the motto “integrate not to surrender.” This ideological vision opened Rondônia to agribusiness and mining expansion. Migrants from other parts of the country, especially from the southern agricultural states, were encouraged to clear the forest as they moved north along BR-364.
Fueled by soybean, corn and beef production, Rondônia is now one of Brazil’s leading agribusiness states, where a pro-deforestation mindset prevails, rooted in a population largely disconnected from the forest, rivers and traditional Amazonian culture. This view gained renewed momentum under Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right president from 2019-2022, who won all 52 of Rondônia’s municipalities in both the 2018 and 2022 elections.
Cutting across Rondônia, BR-364 has become a key route for moving grain, beef and minerals to ports on the Madeira River in Porto Velho. From there, commodities from Brazil’s central-west region are shipped downriver to foreign markets via the Atlantic Ocean.
Now, the highway has taken on even greater strategic importance under the South American Integration and Development Routes Project, an infrastructure initiative launched by the current administration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The plan positions BR-364 as part of an overland link to Peru’s Pacific port of Chancay, designed to streamline exports of agricultural and mineral commodities to China.
In July, Brazil’s Ministry of Transport signed an unprecedented concession contract for a 686-kilometer (426-mile) section of BR-364 in Rondônia, between Porto Velho and the municipality of Vilhena, crossing 10 other municipalities in between. The consortium, formed by 4UM Investimentos and Opportunity Bank, will invest 10.23 billion reais ($2.1 billion) over the next 30 years to modernize and maintain the route. The private group submitted the only bid in an auction held in February at B3, the São Paulo stock exchange.
The contract calls for duplicating more than 100 km (60 mi) of the highway, adding nearly 200 km (120 mi) of passing lanes, and building intersecting roads in urban areas. It also includes resurfacing potholed sections, and building rest stops for truck drivers, walkways for pedestrians, and underpasses for wildlife. The consortium must upgrade 34 km (21 miles) of access roads to the Madeira waterway terminals in Porto Velho.
“This project meets a significant social demand in Rondônia,” João Villaverde, secretary for institutional coordination at Brazil’s Ministry of Planning and Budget, told Mongabay by phone. “The highway required upgrades because exports have increased significantly in recent years.”
Keeping the road corridor in good condition is desirable, as it can lower logistics costs, reduce accidents, and benefit nearby communities. But environmentalists warn that adding new lanes and other infrastructure, along with the increased traffic, could trigger a new wave of deforestation in the Amazon, attracting loggers, miners and land grabbers to areas along BR-364.
“Historically, highways in the Brazilian Amazon have been associated with a major expansion of deforestation,” Suely Araújo, public policy coordinator at the Climate Observatory, a network of civil society organizations, told Mongabay by phone. “Much of the region’s deforestation to date is linked to the construction and paving of highways, which enable the creation of illegal roads used to access the forest and carry out clearing.”
Advancing the deforestation frontier
In the Brazilian government’s plan, the Amazonian stretch of BR-364 is part of the “Rondon Quadrant” or “Route 3” — a set of multimodal paths connecting Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state, and Brazil’s grain-growing states to four Pacific ports: Chancay and Paita in Peru, Manta in Ecuador, and Tumaco in Colombia.
With the BR-364 concession in Rondônia already signed, President Lula’s administration is already planning upgrades to the next stretch of the highway, which runs through the states of Amazonas and Acre toward the Peruvian border. “There is a demand for improvements beyond Rondônia, especially in the Acre section,” Villaverde said.
Infrastructure expansion on this final section is especially concerning from an environmental perspective, as BR-364 cuts through well-preserved areas of the Amazon and passes near Indigenous territories and protected reserves. Researchers and environmentalists warn the highway could open a new deforestation route. “Regardless of the benefits for regional connectivity, cargo transport and other demands, all large-scale infrastructure projects carry environmental costs,” Araújo said.
Today, the BR-364 highway ends in the city of Mâncio Lima, in the state of Acre, about 100 km short of the border with Peru. For years, politicians in Acre have pushed to extend the road into the neighboring country, which would require cutting through Serra do Divisor National Park, one of the most pristine and biodiverse areas of the Brazilian Amazon. But Villaverde from the planning ministry dismissed the proposal. “There are no government plans for a highway toward the park,” he said.
The Brazilian government says it’s aware of the environmental concerns tied to developing Amazonian integration routes, and that all initiatives in Brazil must necessarily have the approval of environmental agencies, both at the federal and state levels, regardless of the mode of transportation or whether public or private funds are involved.
In February, Indigenous groups in Rondônia protested the concession for the BR-364 highway, raising concerns over potential environmental and social impacts. They criticized the lack of prior environmental studies and the absence of mandatory consultations with Indigenous communities that could be affected by the project.
Araújo, who previously headed the federal environmental agency, IBAMA, said the Brazilian Amazon suffers from a lack of environmental monitoring and law enforcement. According to her, the new infrastructure projects must be accompanied by mitigation measures, including the demarcation of Indigenous lands, the creation of protected areas, and other essential safeguards to avoid repeating past mistakes.
First Amazon highway concession
BR-364 in Rondônia is the first federal highway in the Amazon to be granted to the private sector. “The concession is a strategy to ensure the highway’s maintenance,” Fernanda Rezende, executive director of Brazil’s National Confederation of Transport (CNT), an association to support the development of the transport and logistics sectors, told Mongabay by phone. “With the concession, we have a guarantee of more frequent investments to maintain the paving and geometry of the road.”
The Amazon’s climate and terrain have historically made road maintenance difficult for Brazilian public agencies. “It is a region with a lot of rain, which causes flooding and erosion on the roads. Without maintenance, the problem will only worsen,” Rezende said.
She added the experience in Rondônia should guide the concession of new sections of BR-364 in the Amazon, particularly in Acre. However, companies’ interest in operating the highway depends on higher traffic volumes. “A poor-quality highway benefits no one, but the route to Chancay Port does not yet exist, so the concession model is economically risky,” Rezende said.
Brazil plans new Amazon routes linking the Pacific & China’s New Silk Road
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