During his visit to COP30 in Belém (PA), last Tuesday (11), the Minister of Integration and Regional Development (MIDR), Valdez Goes (PDT-AP), said it was necessary to “industrialize the Amazon region” when asked about the investigation into… Bound Which showed that more than 1,600 heavy machines have been delivered to the region through parliamentary amendments since 2015.
Joyce also defended the transfer of the Calha Norte programme, a 40-year-old traditional military project in the legal Amazon states, from the Ministry of Defense to the department he leads, a change implemented in 2025.
The main distributors of heavy machinery in the Amazon are precisely Calha Norte and the state-owned company Codevas (Companhia de Desenvolvimento dos Vales do São Francisco e do Parnaíba), linked to MIDR, and whose historical purposes have been distorted in recent years to become the preferred pipelines of members of the Brazilian Congress. MIDR has been ranked third in the ranking of machinery deliveries since 2015.
For Jos, the main environmental problem in the Amazon is the lack of basic sanitation facilities.
Read key excerpts from the interview with Bound:
This year, the Ministry of Integration and Regional Development became responsible for the Calha Norte programme, a conventional military project in the Amazon region. Is the Ministry prepared to cover the program in this sensitive area of the country?
Since the Ministry of Regional Integration and Development is responsible for regional planning and border development policy, it has a direct relationship to what Calha Norte’s actions were mostly like.
So, although Calha Norte was linked to the Ministry of Defence, 90% of what it implemented in the states was linked to regional development infrastructure.
It was a government decision by President Lula, by Minister Mosío (José Mosío Montero, Minister of Defence), by my team, by the administration, participated by Minister Esther (Esther Dueck, Minister of Administration and Innovation in Public Services). Therefore, it was a group of ministers who understood that the identity of the program was fundamentally linked to regional development.
All contractual obligations, especially since I have not received the server, continue to be implemented by the Ministry of Defense to terminate all contracts there. (The new contracts will be) all with us, including the resources that parliamentarians have already allocated.
Folha found that since 2015, less than 1% of parliamentary amendment values have been allocated to environmental measures, and in the same period, amendments have supported the distribution of more than 1,600 heavy machinery in the legal Amazon, mainly through the Calha Norte and Codevasf programme. What is the Ministry doing to ensure that these machines are not misused and even contribute to deforestation?
I always say that people, in general, know little about government, private and social initiatives in the Amazon, of which there are many, and they end up seeing illegal mining, illegal fishing, illegal deforestation quite often, which also happens, but not in the majority.
The Amazon region is full of good practices, also in terms of innovation in technology and equipment. Can you imagine the Amazon without research, without technology, without innovation? Will we spend another century as a supplier of raw materials for industry in São Paulo or for international industry?
So, we have to fill these gaps. How is it broken? We need to manufacture the Amazon. We need Amazon innovation. We need technology. So, that’s the logic.
Do you think that distributed mechanisms through mods today are necessary for this industrialization?
It is necessary. In the past, under the logic of occupying the Amazon or agrarian reform, they built subdivisions covering hundreds of kilometers.
People struggling to get students to school, struggling to get power and internet? Then the bridge breaks, and the mayor is unable to build the branch. So I look at public policy. You are equipping municipalities, you are equipping society to improve living conditions in the Amazon region.
There was a mayor who made a mistake, punish this mayor. There was an entity that made a mistake, punish this entity. Now, I cannot proceed from the logic that the mayor improperly used a machine to end public policy, which never happened.
I am from the state of Amapa, where 96% of its vegetation has been preserved. I’ve been governor four times. So, I was environmentally responsible. But was it just me? No, the others are gone too. And the private sector as well. As well as traditional residents. It’s our culture. So, we have a right to the technology that these people can produce, and city councils have a right to work with it.
The newspaper also showed a case of modifications used to purchase heavy machinery used by the then mayor of Porto Valter in Acre to open a road whose actions involved illegal deforestation and invasion of indigenous lands. How do you see this danger?
Controversies with a mayor who engages in inappropriate behavior come from here and from any state in Brazil. That’s why there are oversight bodies. There is the ministry that must control, there is the Public Ministry, the Audit Bureau, the Federal Public Ministry, and there are even the police services.
We cannot start from the logic of error to continue not implementing public policy on innovation in the Amazon region and the introduction of technologies in the Amazon region.
It is not possible to demand that Amazonian inequality numbers change. And he even takes better care of the forest, because he takes care of it, when no one takes responsibility.
Parliamentary amendments also consume a lot of resources to pave roads in the Amazon region, and environmental groups warn of the risk of roads becoming vectors of destruction in the region. like mr. Do you see this situation?
As far as I know, no work can be done without the proper license. Licensing is carried out on the basis of existing legal instruments and existing environmental legislation.
Therefore, whether a road, a byway, an interstate or an intercity road is paved, it depends on a project that has been submitted, and legislation that has been adhered to.
Thus, if that is done, I see no reason why we should not have the same rights as other parts of the country. Just because we’re Amazon? The distances are huge. It’s very difficult. In fact, there is not enough money to pave all the roads in the Amazon.
In your opinion, what is the biggest environmental problem in the Amazon?
The biggest environmental problem in the Amazon is basic sanitation. Our basic sanitation indicators are a major challenge. The cost of doing so, whether it is water, wastewater treatment or solid waste, is very high.
It is therefore essential that the national and international community look at the Amazon region when discussing the environmental issue, not only in terms of the river and the forest, but what basic sanitation, or lack thereof, can cause, whether in the river or in the forest.
X-ray | Valdez Goes, 64
Minister of Integration and Regional Development, Antonio Valdez Goes da Silva, from Jurupa (Pennsylvania). He was governor of Amapa State for four terms, from 2003 to 2010 and from 2015 to 2022. He began political career in 1989, when he joined the PDT Party. He is an agricultural technician trained at the Escola Agrotécnica Federal de Castanhal (PA) and a professional public servant as a rural extension worker.
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