A proposed railway project in South America aims to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, from Brazil to Peru, crossing the Amazon rainforest and the Andes. This would result in significant savings in travel time and cost, in addition to greatly benefiting trade. The estimated cost is about $10 billion, and the project is expected to take approximately 6 years to complete.
It is an initiative proposed by China and Brazil, and although the feasibility of this project is currently being assessed, some technical studies have already been conducted on Brazilian soil. Not everyone is pleased with the proposed route, as it would cut through the Amazon rainforest—the world’s largest tropical forest—with Brazil and Peru hosting the largest portions of it. This makes it absolutely essential that the study take the environment into account, which is why both countries are conducting surveys of their territories so that the environmental impact be minimum.
If this ambitious project goes ahead, it would be very important for China as one of the region’s largest importers of raw materials, since the construction of a railway infrastructure of this magnitude in the area would facilitate trade with all of Latin America, bolstering China’s dominance over raw materials from the southern part of the continent. This agreement is not the only one between the two countries, which have signed a total of 35 agreements related to oil, airlines, and other matters.
