By Bruno Kelly and Anthony Boadle
MANAUS, Brazil (Reuters) - Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, after months of hedging on the issue, has committed his government to finishing a road through a pristine part of the Amazon rainforest, a move scientists say will bring disastrous deforestation.
Lula is under pressure to complete paving the BR-319 as an alternative for transportation now that the Amazon is facing a record drought that has lowered river water levels and hindered navigation on major waterways linking the north of Brazil, such as the Madeira river.
"While the Madeira river was navigable, the highway did not have the importance it has now. We are going to finish it with the greatest responsibility," Lula said on Tuesday.
The paving of BR-319 is a rare political stance that Lula holds in common with his nemesis, ex-President Jair Bolsonaro, who presided over sky-rocketing deforestation and also championed the roadway.
Federal highway BR-319, a roughly 900 km (560 miles) stretch from Porto Velho near Bolivia to the Amazon's largest city of Manaus, was first bulldozed through the forest in the 1970s by Brazil's military dictatorship, but was then abandoned and the jungle overgrew most of the road.
Sections at both ends have been paved, but more than 400 km in the middle are still dirt road that turns to impassable mud in the rainy season.
Scientists and environmental activists say completion of the road will open access to illegal loggers and miners, and farmers who clear the forest by setting fires to open the land for cattle ranching.
One study estimated the project would result in a five-fold rise in deforestation by 2030, the equivalent of an area larger than the U.S. state of Florida.
Lula's Environmental Minister Marina Silva opposed the highway, saying it was not viable in economic and environmental terms. But in June a Transport Ministry working group contradicted her, concluding that the road was viable and her view has lost ground in the administration.
DROUGHT AND FIRES
Visiting the region on Tuesday, Lula denied Silva opposed paving the highway, which was suspended in July by a federal judge due to the lack of safeguards against deforestation.
Speaking alongside Amazon state Governor Wilson Lima and two conservative senators who also back the project, Lula proposed negotiating a "definite solution" to recover the highway.
Much work needs to be done to finish the highway, including rebuilding two bridges that collapsed and the construction of a new bridge across the Igapo-Acu river, where trucks have to line up to get across on a ferry barge.
The consequences of the current drought are evident in the unprecedented number of fires burning along the BR-319, destroying thousands of hectares of rainforest, as witnessed this week by a Reuters photographer.
Experts say fires in a tropical rainforest do not ignite on their own but are started by people, often purposely to clear land for farming. The flames spread rapidly through the vegetation parched by drought. Paving BR-319 can only increase destruction by fire, they say.
"As unprecedented drought and fires ravage the Amazon, the paving of the BR-319 highway will unleash a catastrophic wave of deforestation that further exacerbates today's crisis, with dire global climatic implications," said Christian Poirier, a spokesperson for Amazon Watch campaign group.
Lula's decision to proceed with the highway contradicted his administration's avowed goal of containing destruction of the Amazon.
He brushed off international pressure to preserve the rainforest that climate experts say is vital to slow global warming.
"The world that buys our food is demanding that we preserve the Amazon. And why? Because they want us to take care of the air they breathe," he said, stating that Brazil will not keep the Amazon as a "sanctuary for humanity" but will develop the region economically in a sustainable way.
(Reporting by Bruno Kelly in Manaus and Anthony Boadle in Brasilia; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
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