Colombia scraps Amazon highway plans due to deforestation concerns

Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos declared earlier this month that a controversial highway project that would cut through the Amazon will not be completed. Santos pointed at rampant deforestation and potentially irreversible environmental impacts to a sensitive ecological corridor near three national parks if the highway project were followed through to completion. The Marginal de la Selva highway is part of $1 billion infrastructure project that would have opened a trade route for heavy land cargo to pass from Venezuela to Ecuador through Colombia without having to enter the treacherous Andes mountains. Santos told local newspaper El Tiempo that the highway project “is not going to be done because it would be completely counterproductive from the environmental point of view.” The announcement was made as environmentalists decried a massive increase in deforestation in the region around the proposed highway project, which directly borders three national parks. An aerial photo shows deforestation associated with a roadway in Colombia’s Amazon. Photo courtesy of CDA Following a historic 2016 peace agreement with Colombia’s former largest guerrilla group the FARC, the power vacuum left by the demobilized rebels exacerbated deforestation as land speculators flooded into the area to clear tracts of forest for speculative cattle ranching and palm oil projects. According to environmental government agency Corporation for Sustainable Development of the North-East Amazon (CDA), many of these speculators are connected to illegal armed groups. Wilfredo Pachón, local CDA Director in San Jose de Guaviare, said property values can increase up to three times over…

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