Brazilian building boom
both large- and small-scale dams in the Amazon basin back on the table.
The new dams could flood and destroy riverbanks, alter animal breeding cycles and provide the catalysts for large-scale urbanization, as happened here in Altamira. And even though they could generate renewable electricity, the huge projects will spur greater deforestation because of the road networks and population surges that inevitably go with them.
But for Bolsonaro’s Brazil, the dam network holds the irresistible potential of billions of dollars’ worth of investments in Latin America’s largest nation.
“Let’s use the riches that God gave us for the well-being of our population,” Bolsonaro said on a recent visit to the Amazon, where he proposed opening an ecological reserve to mining.
Anchored by Belo Monte, this frontier city on the banks of the Xingu River is now a developer’s vision of the forest’s future.
On a busy Saturday night, at the Golden Ridge Mall, Douglas Pretas is helping his staff work the weekend rush behind the register at Altamira’s newest institution: Burger King.
“Would you like to make that a combo?” a beaming Pretas asks a local woman in Portuguese. She flashes a quizzical look before replying, “Combo? What’s a combo?”
The tipping point
The Amazon rain forest stretches like a blanket of green velvet across nine countries in South America. But no nation is more a guardian of the forest than Brazil, home to 60 percent of the Amazon basin.
Well before Bolsonaro, the Amazon faced serious challenges. Since the rubber boom of the 19th century, followed by the gold rushes, ranching, damming and logging of the 20th and 21st centuries, about 15% of the Amazon has been deforested.
And this rain forest might be in even more danger than most people think.
For years, scientists assumed that about 40% of the rain forest had to be lost before it would reach the dangerous point at which its ecosystem could no longer heal itself, creating drier, hotter weather cycles that could turn vast areas of the jungle into savanna.
But in recent years, scientists have delivered a more alarming verdict. Carlos Nobre, a senior researcher at the University of Sao Paulo, and Thomas Lovejoy, a noted ecologist at George Mason University, suggested that because of exacerbating factors such as climate change and worsening forest fires, such a red line could be crossed at a far lower threshold of 20 to 25 percent deforestation.
The impact, scientists say, would be devastating. Vast areas of the rain forest would be indelibly altered by changing climate patterns, leading to higher temperatures in the immediate area and lower rainfall not only in Brazil but also in Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina.
The global impacts could also be severe. Unless deforestation is stopped before reaching the tipping point, some 50% or 60% of the Amazon will be lost, meaning the forest will no longer be able to pull carbon out of the air at the same rate, allowing about 550 million tons of carbon dioxide to remain in the atmosphere each year, according to Nobre. This amount is comparable to the annual emissions of a major economy, such as Canada or South Korea, dealing a potentially critical setback to the global effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
“If that tipping point is crossed, it’s irreversible,” Nobre said. “It’s an ongoing dynamic process that will really lead to savanna-ization of 50%, 60% of the Amazon.”
During the final months of last year’s election campaign, illegal loggers apparently emboldened by Bolsonaro’s rhetoric — and aided by dispirited inspectors — sparked a threefold increase in deforestation in some parts of the jungle. Since taking office, the former army captain has eliminated the country’s ministry of indigenous affairs and slashed the budget of Brazil’s environmental protection agency by 24%. During the first two months of Bolsonaro’s presidency, IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental regulatory agency, issued fewer fines than at any point since 1995.
“Investment inevitably brings about degradation,” said Otavio Neves, an administrator at the Association of Gold Miners of the Tapajos River in Itaituba, who heralded the potential of a new dam to open more and deeper terrain to mining.
“Progress is not made from cotton candy,” he said. “It is hard; it demands a lot from nature. But it has to exist.”
‘Ideology of fear’
The price of progress is written on the banks of the Xingu River in Altamira.
Along the shoreline, rows of what were once tall and sturdy trees stand bleached white and dying. The frilly tops of acai palms bob like drowned corpses just below the waterline.
Dams built in Brazil during the country’s military dictatorship flooded mass swaths of land and blocked the flow of the river completely. By the mid-2000s, Brazil had become more environmentally conscious and had cut back on some practices known to damage the rain forest. But the Belo Monte dam was nevertheless greenlighted, long before Bolsonaro became president, because of a chronic energy shortage that had led to blackouts and rationing over the previous two decades.
Experts say the slow flow of the water is killing the river’s 63 species of fish, including the pacu, a staple of the local indigenous diet, and altering the lifestyle of tribes that depend on them for nutrition. Construction of the dam also sparked deforestation in nearby indigenous reserves, as land values in the area soared.
In Altamira, construction of the dam added 35,000 temporary workers to the 99,000 people already living there. The influx fueled a stunning growth spurt, even as tens of thousands of rural dwellers upriver were displaced. Many ended up in planned communities in Altamira, some of which transformed into ghettos rife with drugs and crime.
Altamira’s mayor, Domingos Juvenil, dismisses the naysayers with a wave. If the dam brought anything, he says, it was a muchneeded boost to the city’s economy.
“Some people are against everything,” he said. “It’s the ideology of fear.”
‘Not just fairy tales’
Four blocks away from the Golden Ridge Mall, which opened to great fanfare in 2017, Pretas, the Burger King franchisee, sat with his accountant in his new home.
He went over the payroll for the 17 people in the region who now have jobs because of him.
“We’re providing work,” he said.
In the age of his political hero, Bolsonaro, Brazil, he says, is asserting itself. Other industrialized countries have harnessed their land and resources. Why, he reasons, shouldn’t Brazil?
“It’s hypocritical,” he said. “The U.S. and the European Union say that the Amazon should be protected. But they destroyed all of their forests.” For too many years, he said, Brazilian leaders were too weak, too hesitant. Bolsonaro, he says, is an inspiration.
“We are seeing things changing concretely now — not just fairy tales, but business owners who believe in the economy now,” he said.
Across the food court from Burger King, there’s a mural of jungle animals and forest, now a popular backdrop for mall-goers to take selfies. He’s the only international fast-food chain here, but because of the dam and all it brought to Altamira, he’s sure, he says, that the city is on the cusp of great things.
Not far away, a Canadian company is angling to build a large-scale gold mine, the kind of project that was stalled in recent years because of environmental risks, but that Bolsonaro has signaled a willingness to fast-track.
“I know other investments are coming, in gold and mining. It will bring hotels, and the city will grow,” Pretas said.
He later added: “Because in the Amazon, you can make money. That’s how I’ve always felt. That the Amazon was a place where you could really make money.”