Hydroelectric Development and Road Paving in Brazil's Transamazon Area

摘要

There are renewed signs that the Brazilian government has retaken the path of large-scale development in the Amazon and that the strategy has been defined with practically no input from society. Among many other development proj- ects for the region, the federal government recently announced two new proj- ects that will profoundly affect the Transamazon Highway area around the town of Altamira. One of the projects is the development of a major hydroelec- tric power plant on the Xingu River (Belo Monte) and the other is the paving of the Transamazon between the towns of Maraba and Altamira in eastern Ama- zonia.