The continued failure to halt the BR-319 highway cutting through the Brazilian Amazon is an example of the systemic problem identified by Hannah Arendt in her study of the minister of transportation of Nazi Germany, who had administered the movement of trains throughout Germany and its occupied territories, including the trains that carried millions of people to extermination camps Rather than a moral monster, Adolf Eichmann was revealed at his trial in Jerusalem to be a typical bureaucrat who carried out the functions of his office and believed he had no responsibility for what that implied beyond the purview of his ministry. Arendt codified this as the “banality of evil.” While the case that Arendt studied is an extreme example, the principle involved applies strongly to bureaucracies throughout the world, including those dealing with large infrastructure projects in Amazonia, such as BR-319. The impacts of the overall BR-319 project are many times greater than what is considered in the licensing process, including the additions to the process through the recent “accord” between the Brazilian Ministry of Environment and Climate Change (MMA) and the Ministry of Transport that would implement a “Sustainable BR-319 plan” in a 50-kilometer-wide (31-mile) strip on each side of the highway. Roads planned to connect to BR-319, such as the 574-km (357-mi) AM-366 highway, would open the vast Trans-Purus region to the west of the highway to the entry of deforesters. This area is the most critical for the Amazon Rainforest’s water recycling function that, via the…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via this RSS feed