Amazon Rainforest Razed To Build Highway For UN Climate Summit

Ahead of the COP30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil, developers are carving a four-lane highway through protected tracts of the Amazon rainforest to ease travel for attendees.

The highway, one of several infrastructure projects fast-tracked for the summit, is meant to ease congestion for the more than 50,000 attendees expected in November. The state government insists the road is a “sustainable” development with wildlife crossings, bike lanes and solar lighting, but local critics argue it contradicts the very mission of the climate conference, according to the BBC.

“Everything was destroyed,” Claudio Verequete, a local resident whose family depended on the açaí trees that once stood where the road now cuts through the forest, told the BBC. “Our harvest has already been cut down. We no longer have that income to support our family.”

The highway, known as Avenida Liberdade, had been shelved multiple times in the past due to environmental concerns but was revived as part of a broader push to modernize Belém ahead of COP30, according to the outlet. State officials say the city’s transformation will leave a lasting legacy, including an expanded airport, new hotels and an ungraded port to accommodate cruise ships.

Adler Silveira, the Brazilian state of Pará’s infrastructure secretary, defended the highway project in a statement to the BBC, calling it an “important mobility intervention” that will benefit the local population long after the summit ends.

Satellite images of the area appear to show miles of cleared land where dense rainforest once stood. Conservationists warn that beyond immediate deforestation, the road could enable further illegal logging and land speculation