Peru President Alan García inaugurated the 57-kilometer Tarapoto–Pongo de Caynarachi stretch of the Northern Amazon Corridor Wednesday, daily El Comercio reported.
The Tarapoto–Pongo de Caynarachi stretch – which cost $88 million – completes the Tarapoto-Yurimaguas Highway, which is part of the 955-kilometer Northern Amazon Corridor that runs through the regions of Loreto, San Martín, Amazonas, Cajamarca, Lambayeque and Piura.
New road projects in the Amazon Basin present one of the greatest challenges for accomplishing goals of environmental sustainability and social justice in the region.
“On the one hand,” reports the Conservation Strategy Fund, “roads are seen as required elements for economic development, but they can come with a host of social and environmental disadvantages.”
These disavantages may include grave and irreversible environmental and social impacts such as a rapid increase in deforestation, the degradation of natural forests and invasion of protected areas, increased forest fires, uncontrolled gold exploitation, the loss of biodiversity, the spread of human diseases, the displacement of indigenous and non-indigenous communities and the concentration of landholdings.
