Transportation Logistics and Endogenous Development in the Amazon
Bertha
K
Becker, UFRJ, b.becker@uol.com.br
(Presenting)
Brazil is a continent, and was historically forged according to the frontier economy paradigm. From the sixties on, huge roads have been built in the Amazon aiming, first, to national integration, and then to exports, mainly of soy. Meanwhile, intrarregional connectivity was neglected. There is, therefore, a conflict between: a) Soy competitiveness on external markets, which depends on lower costs based on a powerful logistics that is being developed by corporations; b) Local and regional endogenous development based on diversified production mainly for local markets, that lack adequate infrastructure to support their activities. In other words, there is a conflict between two, very different time-spaces, that demand different strategies for their existence.
It is well known the perverse social and environmental impacts of road building in the Amazon. Nevertheless, although with different motivations, all regional actors today ask for transportation. The central question, therefore, is how to solve the conflict between such different time-spaces associated to divergent interest and forces. The paper discusses alternatives at the political, territorial, scientific and technological levels.