cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/44101271

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• 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.

[…]

Fueled by soybean, corn and beef production, [the Brazilian state of] 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.