- Brazil’s President Lula has personally cemented his support for the project and set his cabinet to work out a deal to renew the BR-319 highway, which passes through one of the most preserved areas of the Amazon.
- Scientists warn the highway will create a “fishbone effect” of illegal side roads, fueling deforestation that could push the Amazon past a critical tipping point and trigger its irreversible conversion into a savanna.
- A recent congressional reform, labeled the “Devastation Bill” by activists, allows strategic projects like BR-319 to bypass full environmental reviews and shifts approval authority to a politically appointed council.
The 885-kilometer (550-mile) highway in Brazil between the cities of Manaus and Porto Velho, BR-319, is one of the most controversial infrastructure projects in the Amazon. Local politicians argue that repaving the road — left in disrepair for decades and unpassable during the rainy seasons — would reconnect Amazonas state, where Manaus is the capital, with the rest of Brazil, leading to a new era of prosperity in the region. Environmentalists, however, fear a catastrophe, since the road slices through one of the rainforest’s most conserved areas, home to 69 Indigenous territories and 41 conservation units.
Some critics argue that BR-319’s renewal could push the Amazon to its tipping point, at which the rainforest converts into a savanna. “BR-319 is the first domino in a chain of effects that will affect South America and ultimately the whole planet,” environmentalist Marcos Woortmann told Mongabay in July.
Despite those warnings, the Brazilian government is ready to announce a political deal to advance the highway’s repavement. In September, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said that a “definitive deal” would be reached by the end of the month between opposing forces within his cabinet to move the project forward. “We will build the BR-319 highway, I can assure you,” said Lula in an interview with Rede Amazônica TV. “But we will do so in agreement with environmentalists, with those who need the road, and above all, to serve two capitals that cannot remain isolated, such as Porto Velho [in the state of Rondônia] and Manaus.”
Scientists warn that paving the road would worsen a “fishbone effect”, where illegal side roads sprout from the main highway, giving access to loggers, land grabbers and ranchers. A recent report by the federal government identified 26 illegal access points at various locations along the highway.
Despite the alarms, this tug of war seems all but won by defenders of BR-319. First, Lula himself, who ran in 2022 vowing to defend the Amazon, manifested his support for the repaving in September 2024. Then, in July this year, Congress approved a sweeping environmental licensing reform that could accelerate BR-319 and other megaprojects. The new rules allow projects deemed “strategic” to bypass full environmental reviews if approvals take longer than a year, with decisions left to a politically appointed council rather than environmental authorities.
Activists labeled the reform the “Devastation Bill.” Suely Araújo, former president of IBAMA and public policy coordinator at Brazil’s nonprofit coalition Climate Observatory, said it represents the “implosion of environmental control in Brazil.” Meanwhile, Lula has been giving conflicting signs, vetoing more than 60 articles in the bill, but signing an executive order that fast-tracks the “strategic,” council-approved licensing framework.
A preservationist’s bet on damage control
At the center of this storm is Marina Silva, Brazil’s minister of environment and climate change. Born in Acre state and raised as a rubber tapper, Silva built her career as one of the Amazon’s most respected defenders. During her first tenure as minister in the 2000s, serving under Lula in his first term as president, she oversaw policies that drove deforestation rates to historic lows.
Silva eventually resigned after clashing with then-minister and future president Dilma Rousseff over megaprojects such as the Belo Monte dam — a hydropower plant that has disrupted the livelihoods of local Indigenous people. She returned to Lula’s cabinet in January 2023, showing mixed results: While deforestation in the Amazon decreased 21% in 2023 and 30% in 2024, the rainforest’s degradation levels reached a 15-year high in 2024, according to nonprofit Imazon. Also, in May 2025, deforestation increased 92% year over year, the second-worst result recorded in one month.
When it comes to the BR-319, Silva’s position has softened recently. At first, she said she considered the project “complex” and argued that it needed environmental studies to assess its feasibility. Her skeptical stance resulted in hostile questioning from lawmakers. Opposing senators from Amazonas accused her of blocking development in the region, with one even saying he felt like “strangling her” during a hearing. Faced with pressure from Congress and seeing other ministries backing the project, Silva saw herself in an increasingly isolated position.
Eventually, Silva became more of a proponent of “damage control.” Recently, she announced a joint strategic environmental assessment for the project, bringing together ministries, regulators and civil society to negotiate safeguards on BR-319’s renewal. The idea, she argued, is not to greenlight the project unconditionally but to ensure that it does not follow the destructive path of past megaprojects.
Silva made her conciliatory point of view clear in an interview on the public network TV Brasil in August. “We should move quickly without compromising quality,” Silva said, stressing that the licensing process must be viewed as technical, even if overseen by a political council. Her reasoning was that “the laws of nature do not change based on our political decisions.”
In the interview, Silva said that her team is working with the Ministry of Transportation, which has long supported the renovation of the highway, to carry out studies for the BR-319, in collaboration with institutions such as the Amazon Research Institute and the Federal University of Amazonas. “We have to work to make both things possible,” she said, meaning both the technical viability assessment and the road renovation itself.
“It’s about making the state arrive earlier, not just with asphalt, but with conservation policies, land governance, and social protections,” Federal Deputy Nilto Tatto, head of the environmental caucus in Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies, told Mongabay. He said that, in previous cases, such as the Transamazon highway, development came first, and regulation came too late. “If it’s going to come out, we need to get ahead of it — or we’ll repeat the ‘fishbone’ pattern of roads and uncontrolled occupation.”
Silva’s pragmatic approach
For many, Silva’s gamble is rooted in political pragmatism. Paulo Busse, lawyer for the Climate Observatory, said the minister realized she could not hold the line forever against the combined pressure of regional politicians, Congress and other cabinet members. “She feels she won’t be able to stop BR-319, so she’s trying to guarantee that, if it goes ahead, it does so with maximum care — more than any government has ever applied to such a project.”
Still, Busse underscores the limitations of this approach, stressing that even the best-designed safeguards require enforcement in a region where the state is almost absent. “The Amazon today is marked by lawlessness. More than 50 Indigenous peoples will be impacted, some still uncontacted. How will the government guarantee their right to be consulted? How will it respond when land grabbers and loggers move in the moment the first machine arrives?”
Even before Silva’s conciliatory position was made evident, other government officials had floated more palatable alternatives to the BR-319 renovation. In May, plans for a “parkway” model were made public by the Ministry of Transportation. The idea included 4-meter-high (13-feet-high) fences, electronic monitoring, 170 wildlife crossings, and fixed police and environmental posts along the road. Proponents argue that the plan would regulate human access and protect wildlife, while facilitating traffic flow between Manaus and Porto Velho.
The “parkway” model appears to be in line with Silva’s preference for a balance between development and preservation. However, critics question the model’s effectiveness in a region where environmental crimes are rife. Woortmann points out the enormous evasion of federal environmental agents, while Araújo denounces the sheer absence of the state in the Amazon rainforest. “There, issues are solved by the bullet,” she said.
For Busse, Silva’s strategic environmental assessments (SEA) are little more than wishful thinking. He said he recalls how past infrastructure projects in the Amazon — such as the Belo Monte dam and the construction of BR-163 in Pará state — were touted as models of environmental responsibility, but ended up failing. “With BR-163, the Public Prosecutor’s Office monitored every step, Indigenous communities were supposed to be protected, and still it failed. Deforestation exploded, violence grew, and traditional populations were harmed.”
Busse said he fears BR-319 will follow the same script. “There is no precedent of success. None. To believe this time will be different is to ignore our own history,” he said. He is especially alarmed that the project threatens one of the most intact areas of the Amazon. “We are talking about the heart of the forest, with the highest biodiversity, with isolated peoples, with intact hydrological cycles. Opening this area is the push that could bring us to the point of no return.”
Tatto said he acknowledges the risks but takes a more pragmatic position. For him, opposing BR-319 outright is no longer viable given Congress’s composition and Lula’s political reasoning ahead of 2026’s general elections. “The project will inevitably move forward at some point,” he said, arguing that Silva’s leadership is critical in this process, given her insistence on safeguards. “Marina hasn’t abandoned her convictions,” he said. “She is very aware of the political forces at play and is doing her best to mitigate damage. The strategic environmental assessment is a way to ensure we don’t just bring the bulldozers but also public policies, oversight, and conservation.”
Busse said he remains unconvinced. “Even if the Supreme Court intervenes, even if civil society mobilizes, each day the project signals it will advance, deforestation accelerates. You can already see new illegal roads appearing. Political signaling is enough to unleash destruction.”
Ultimately, Silva’s strategic approach to the BR-319 project reflects the tightrope she walks right now, finding the balance between the political compromises of the minister and the preservation efforts of the environmentalist. As Brazil prepares to host COP30 in Belém in November, Silva seems ready to play her “Strategic Environmental Assessment” card to a global audience: an attempt to show the world that development and preservation can be reconciled in the Amazon.
But with Congress pushing to weaken safeguards — lawmakers are set to discuss and vote on Lula’s vetoes to the “Devastation Bill” in the upcoming weeks — and regional elites demanding the highway, the odds are stacked against her. “The tragedy is announced,” Busse warned. “The question is whether Brazil will choose to hear it.”
Brazil’s Congress passes ‘devastation bill’ in major environmental setback
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