On 13 March 2025, the Cop30 secretariat published a statement regarding the news reported by the BBC, clarifying that Avenida Liberdade is indeed under construction, but was not requested by the federal government and does not form part of the 33 infrastructure projects linked to the upcoming UN climate conference. This is evidenced by a document in which the government of Pará describes the project, published as far back as 2020, well before Belem was designated as the host city.

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Cop30, the thirtieth Conference of the Parties on climate, scheduled for November 2025, is already historic in its own way. Not only because it will reopen the major debate on the mitigation of global warming, which was all but forgotten at last year's Cop29 in Baku. But also because it will do so in Belem, in the heart of the Amazon rainforest. The symbolic choice made by Brazil's president, Lula, is enormously powerful. Yet it brings with it a series of practical implications. The administration must prepare for the arrival of 50,000 people, including the world's leading heads of state, and is doing so in part by building infrastructure — among it a new, highly controversial four-lane highway that will cut through kilometres of protected areas.

The new highway in the middle of the Amazon rainforest

The government of the federal state of Pará began examining the project for the so-called Avenida Liberdade (PA-020) as far back as 2012, before shelving and reviving it on several occasions due to concerns over its environmental impact. In June 2024 it was officially approved. The plan involves the construction of 13.3 kilometres of road, with two lanes in each direction, plus three viaducts and a bridge over the Aurá river. The route begins near the campus of the federal university of Pará in Belem and ends at the Alça Viária junction in Marituba. It crosses three rivers — in addition to the Aurá, also the Murutucu and the Pau Grande — and sits just 500 metres from the Utinga state park. In essence, it is intended to ease congestion in the city ahead of a sharp rise in traffic.

Adler Silveira, the Pará government's Secretary of Infrastructure, described it to the BBC as "a sustainable highway", featuring wildlife corridors, cycle paths and solar-powered lighting. He also noted that it is just one of thirty projects to modernise Belem, alongside the expansion of the airport (from 7 to 14 million passengers), the construction of several hotels and the upgrading of the port.

Concerns for the future of the Amazon and those who call it home

Yet images of piles of felled tree trunks heaped on land stripped of its vegetation raise fears that the impact of this new highway on the Amazon rainforest will be something very different. "Everything has been destroyed," Claudio Verequete told the BBC. He lives two hundred metres from the road's route and makes his living harvesting açaí berries — or rather, he used to, because the trees have been cut down. For now he is supporting his family on savings set aside in the past, as he has received no compensation from the government. He also fears that the area, now made more easily accessible, will fall easy prey to property and industrial development.

Another risk is that the highway will create a rift in the Amazon rainforest, fragmenting the ecosystem and hindering the movement of wildlife — effectively reducing their habitat. This is the view of Professor Silvia Sardinha, a veterinarian and researcher who was also interviewed by the BBC. She openly criticises the Brazilian government for having reopened the debate on the future of the Amazon only "at a very high level, among business leaders and government officials", without listening to those who actually live in the Amazon.