Day Dez: From dirt to pavement

It’s the classic saga of industrialization: the formation of trade routes, logging and mining routes that eventually become dirt roadways, to paved highways. While the questions arises of which came first the industry or the road; one must keep in mind the history of each area in Brasil to understand the relationship between road construction and industrialization. In Northern California, for example, there are a few preservationist groups who would like to blockade some of the old timber logging roads, but what good would this do since the roads aren’t even used for this industry in the same scale as 15 years ago. Now the road is road, hikers, campers and hunters use the road. Firefighters use the road. Northern California’s road situation is far different from that of Brasil’s, however.

Paving roads in Brasil means the threat of access to those who shouldn’t necessarily be accessing it. It means further access into the Amazon Rainforest that grilagems (people who squat on a piece of land and use it as their own and then attempt to sell the land to someone else) will use to exploit or other poachers of all sorts. As Peter Mann de Toledo, the president of the Institute of Social and Economic Development of Pará and former director of the Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi (pictured below), as soon as the government supports paved road development many see it as an opportunity to do some development of their own. “It’s a new El Dorado,” he said where all of sudden people are running out and searching for the treasure.

Mann de Toledo also discussed the change in land development from 20 to 30 years ago in Brasil to what is encouraged and used today. Below is a picture the methods used before more regulations were set in place. The corridor is the forest, usually along a water source, with small patches (the mancha) of forest surrounding the greater matrix where the road and resource production/harvesting took place.

Today the 80/20 law is followed more strictly (where 80 percent of the land is set aside for forest conservation and 20 percent is used for farming and/or ranching). Now the corridor is the road in and out, the matrix (the larger parts) is forest left untouched and the mancha is the cleared area for land development. Below is an example.