The future of Amazonia: models to predict the consequences of future infrastructure in Brazil's multi-annual plans

Since 1996 the planning of the Brazilian Government's investment has been organized into four-year plans: Brazil in Action (1996-1999), Advance Brazil (2000- 2003), PPA [Multi-Annual Plan] (2004-2007), PAC [Program for the Acceleration of Growth] (2008-2011), and PAC-2 (2012-2015). Each plan has included a long list of roads, dams and other large infrastructure projects in the Amazon. Several of these projects have been included in a number of plans because economic constraints have prevented the completion of the projects at the pace initially imagined. This is the case with projects such as the Belo Monte Hydroelectric Dam and the BR-163 (Cuiabá-Santarém) and BR- 319 (Manaus-Porto Velho) Highways. These delayed projects are now either under construction or about to start. Models have been developed by different groups to predict the future consequences if projects such as these are undertaken. Different models capture different aspects of the problem, and many of them indicate large increases in deforestation and degradation with serious environmental and social implications. One of the models takes as a point of departure the assumption that roads would have negligible or even beneficial effects on total deforestation, but this contradicts what is observed in the real world