Medindo os Efeitos Indiretos da Infraestrutura de Transporte na Amazônia

This whitepaper by the Climate Policy Initiative (CPI/PUC-Rio) argues that current environmental and technical feasibility studies for transport infrastructure in the Amazon fail to account for indirect effects, specifically how reduced transport costs induce deforestation far from the project site. The authors propose a 'market access' approach using geoprocessing and statistical analysis to better quantify these risks and recommend that these methodologies be integrated into official project evaluations to avoid underestimating environmental costs.

• Current Technical, Economic, and Environmental Feasibility Studies (EVTEA) and Environmental Impact Studies (EIAs) lack transparency in their methodology for delimiting areas of influence, particularly regarding indirect effects. This leads to the identification of areas that may not reflect all the potential impacts of a project.
• Transport infrastructure improvements can cause indirect environmental damage far from the actual investment site. Reduced freight costs can encourage producers in various regions to expand production, creating pressure to convert forests into pasture or crops and inducing migration due to increased labor demand.
• Ignoring indirect costs leads to three primary failures: overestimating the social return of investments in feasibility studies, creating priority project lists that may include harmful projects, and failing to implement adequate mitigation and compensation measures for the total environmental damage.
• The 'market access' approach developed by CPI/PUC-Rio uses geoprocessing and statistical analysis to quantify environmental impacts. Analysis of the Legal Amazon between 1985 and 2018 indicates that a 1% increase in market access leads to a 0.2% to 0.4% increase in deforestation volume. Overall, changes in accessibility accounted for 34% of observed deforestation between 1990 and 2017.
• The EF-170 (Ferrogrão) railway project illustrates the disparity between direct and indirect costs. While the project is estimated to reduce carbon emissions by 1,000,000 tCOe due to lower emissions from trains compared to trucks, its indirect cost is estimated to be much higher, potentially increasing deforestation by approximately 2,000 km2 and releasing over 60,000,000 tCOe.
• The authors provide two policy recommendations: first, that EVTEAs incorporate indirect environmental risk assessments to identify the indirect area of influence early; and second, that EIAs use robust methodologies to identify both direct and indirect areas of influence to ensure mitigation and compensation cover all affected economic, social, and environmental dynamics.

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} }