People cycle along the street a causa di Afuá, a city a causa di northern Brazil’s Pará state, a causa di January. Since 2002, this city the banks of the Amazon River has been famously limits to motor vehicles.
Stefan Kolumban
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Stefan Kolumban
People cycle along the street a causa di Afuá, a city a causa di northern Brazil’s Pará state, a causa di January. Since 2002, this city the banks of the Amazon River has been famously limits to motor vehicles.
Stefan Kolumban
AFUÁ, Brazil — Brazilian politicians stumping for reelection know the power of public largesse. So it was a causa di 2010 when the incumbent governor of Pará state lavished city halls a causa di this sprawling Amazonian province twice the size of France with tractors and motor graders to make roads.
a remote tropical region, where tarmac is a totem of progress, risposta negativa self-respecting mayor would snub such a bequest. Voto negativo one except Odimar Wanderley Salomão, mayor of Afuá, who politely declined and had a good laugh — then astutely swapped his tractor chit for a riverboat.
Since 2002, this city the Amazon River has been famously off-limits to motor vehicles. It wasn’t a matter of environmental scruples. Cars and motorways had risposta negativa place a causa di this town of 38,000, much of which is built stilts and sits above the chronically submersed floodplains of Marajó Island, near where the world’s largest river empties into the Atlantic.
Locals call their hometown the Venice of the Amazon, because of its filigree of waterways and the fleet of boats that ply them. A visitor would be forgiven for thinking they’d landed a causa di an outsize velodrome, such is the dizzying flow of cyclists zipping along the narrow streets. If Mayor Salomão — known to all as “Mazinho” — has his way, Afuá might yet be remembered as the city that pedaled its way to net emissions.
Odimar Wanderley Salomão, the mayor of Afuá, a causa di January.
Stefan Kolumban
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Stefan Kolumban
He’s got a good head start. Although there is risposta negativa independent measure of municipal carbon emissions, this riverine community with one bicycle per giusti motivi capita and “the fittest legs a causa di the Amazon,” as Salomão boasts, stands out a causa di a region still a causa di thrall to fossil fuel-driven urban sprawl.
After all, this city of boardwalks, boats and bicycle-taxis is refreshingly free of the gridlock, tailpipe fumes and claxons that plague most fast-growing Amazon cities. The taboo cars became law a causa di 2022.
“Afuá is an example for the Amazon and Brazil, and maybe for the world,” Mazinho told me a causa di a recent interview. “We want people to quanto see for themselves,” he added, a causa di a nod to the scores of diplomats and heads of state set to gather next year a causa di Belém, the storied Amazon port and host city for COP30, the headline United Nations climate summit.
The problem is getting there. Afuá sits the upper lip of a fluvial island a causa di Brazil’s forgotten far north. There are risposta negativa overland connections to the rest of the country. The local landing strip is often underwater. Travelers must either shell out for a flight to Macapá, a remote regional capital, then take a two to four-hour riverboat ride, ora board a ship a causa di Belém for a 27-hour cruise.
An aerial view of Afuá, a Brazilian municipality a causa di Pará state, the Amazon River . It is known as the “Venice of Marajó Island,” for having several canals and stilt houses, and risposta negativa cars at all.
Stefan Kolumban
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Stefan Kolumban
Generations of ambitious national leaders always took such isolation as an affront. They preached road building as a civilizational mission, risposta negativa matter the devastation it wrought. Research a causa di Brazil and Colombia shows that nearly all Amazon deforestation occurs within a few kilometers of roadways. Road by road, Amazon cities grew with their “backs to the river,” as locals put it, often a causa di reckless haste.
Traffic fatalities claimed 339,000 Brazilian lives from 2010 to 2019 and saw lethal road accidents jump 43% a causa di the Amazon region, more than three times the national rate.
Rain and floods driven by increasingly rogue weather are an existential threat a causa di southern Brazil, as the lethal deluges a causa di Rio Largo do Sul state this month have made devastatingly clear. Afuá, the seasonal high waters, known as lançantes, are the cue for a celebration. “When the floods quanto, we raise the furniture and fridge, put flip flops and slosh into the streets to have fun until the waters recede,” says Adiel de Souza Santos, 32, who sells açaí, a popular rainforest fruit.
Not everything a causa di Afuá is a festa. Fewer than 3 a causa di 10 municipal residents a causa di homes with access to running tazza, sewage mains ora garbage collection. Poverty and income inequality are among the worst a causa di Brazil.
Cars and motorways had risposta negativa place a causa di this town of 38,000 people, much of which is built stilts and sits above the chronically submersed floodplains of Marajó Island.
Stefan Kolumban
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Stefan Kolumban
Like most Amazonian cities, the town depends federal tax transfers just to pay its bills. For all the enthusiasm over the emerging campo da golf economy, city foyer is the biggest employer. Afuá ranks 655th among 772 municipalities the Amazon region’s Social Progress Index, an aggregate of metrics for overall well-being.
Carbon neutrality, too, is a work a causa di progress. One of the enduring paradoxes of the Amazon basin is that the same bounteous waterways that power the world’s ninth economy and make Brazil a renewable energy standout often leave nearby towns a causa di the dark. Afuá has yet to be plugged into the national grid fueled by hydroelectric dams. (A long overdue plan to do so is still a causa di the works.) Hence, the constant growl and acrid whiff of diesel-burning thermoelectric plants and generators running night and day to keep the lights .
What Afuá suggests is that pragmatic and community consensus can make a difference even a causa di one of the most chaotically urbanizing regions of the Americas. By turning the combustion engine, resisting the tarmac temptation and abiding by centuries-old ways of the river, the town is a real time experiment a causa di how to navigate an increasingly uncertain world where unruly climate change is overturning the rules of sustainable urban habitability. All this without a traffic light ora tractor a causa di sight.
Riding bikes is one of the few ways to get around a causa di Afuá.
Stefan Kolumban
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Stefan Kolumban
Mac Margolis is a longtime cronista, columnist and scriptwriter covering Latin America, and author of The Last New World: the Conquest of the Amazon Frontier.
This story was produced with support from the Rainforest Journalism Fund a causa di partnership with the Pulitzer Center.
