Medindo os Efeitos Indiretos da Infraestrutura de Transporte na Amazônia

The whitepaper highlights a critical gap in how Brazil assesses the environmental impact of transport infrastructure, specifically the failure of Technical, Economic, and Environmental Feasibility Studies (EVTEA) and Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA) to account for indirect effects. It proposes a 'market access' approach, combining geoprocessing and statistical analysis, to quantify how reduced transport costs induce agricultural expansion and deforestation far from the actual project site. Using the Ferrogrão railroad as an example, the authors demonstrate that indirect carbon costs can vastly outweigh direct emissions reductions. The document recommends that EVTEAs and EIAs adopt robust methodologies to identify both direct and indirect areas of influence to ensure sustainable infrastructure development.

• Current Technical, Economic, and Environmental Feasibility Studies (EVTEA) and Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA) lack transparency in their methodology for delimiting areas of influence, particularly regarding indirect effects, which leads to an underestimation of the total environmental cost of projects.
• Transport infrastructure improvements can trigger indirect environmental degradation by reducing freight costs, which encourages producers to expand agricultural production and converts forests into pastures or crops, even in regions distant from the investment.
• Using a 'market access' approach based on geoprocessing and statistical analysis of data from 1985–2018 in the Legal Amazon, researchers found that a 1% increase in market access leads to a 0.2% to 0.4% increase in deforestation volume.
• Analysis of the period between 1990 and 2017 indicates that changes in market accessibility were responsible for 34% of the observed deforestation in the Amazon.
• The Ferrogrão (EF-170) railroad project illustrates the disparity between direct and indirect impacts: while it is estimated to reduce carbon emissions by 1,000,000 tCOe due to lower emissions per unit of cargo compared to trucks, its indirect effect is estimated to increase deforestation by approximately 2,000 km², releasing over 60,000,000 tCOe.

APA

Bragança, A., Araújo, R., & Assunção, J. (2020). Medindo os Efeitos Indiretos da Infraestrutura de Transporte na Amazônia. Climate Policy Initiative. https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/White-Paper-Medindo-Efeitos-Indiretos-da-Infraestrutura-de-Transporte-na-Amazônia-2.pdf

Chicago

Bragança, Arthur, Rafael Araújo, and Juliano Assunção. Medindo os Efeitos Indiretos da Infraestrutura de Transporte na Amazônia. Climate Policy Initiative, 2020. https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/White-Paper-Medindo-Efeitos-Indiretos-da-Infraestrutura-de-Transporte-na-Amazônia-2.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Bragança |first1=Arthur |last2=Araújo |first2=Rafael |last3=Assunção |first3=Juliano |title=Medindo os Efeitos Indiretos da Infraestrutura de Transporte na Amazônia |publisher=Climate Policy Initiative |date=October 2020 |url=https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/White-Paper-Medindo-Efeitos-Indiretos-da-Infraestrutura-de-Transporte-na-Amazônia-2.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{bragana2020medindo, author = {Bragança, Arthur and Araújo, Rafael and Assunção, Juliano}, title = {{Medindo os Efeitos Indiretos da Infraestrutura de Transporte na Amazônia}}, institution = {Climate Policy Initiative}, year = {2020}, month = oct, url = {https://www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/White-Paper-Medindo-Efeitos-Indiretos-da-Infraestrutura-de-Transporte-na-Amazônia-2.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }