Seeking hidden freeway clear-cutting the Amazon to UN’s COP30

https://www.cfact.org/2025/11/14/in-search-of-hidden-highway-clear-cutting-the-amazon-to-cop30/

By Craig Rucker, Peter Murphy

Somewhere in the Amazon Rainforest, Brazil

Thursday morning of the first week of the UN COP30 Climate Summit, CFACT set out to find the new highway being constructed through the Amazon rainforest — the very roadway no climate activist wants to discuss or pretends doesn’t exist.

Thanks to an exclusive story by the BBC back in March, it was revealed that the government of Brazil was constructing the Avenida Liberdade highway to help accommodate the influx of up to 50,000 attendees to the summit.

The highway is only partially finished due to opposition by Amazon forest residents and other opponents. Enough of the road was completed to accommodate convenient travel to downtown Belém, where the summit is being held, but construction continues.

Accessing the still-under-construction portion of the highway was no easy task, since it does not appear on maps. With the help of Google satellite photos assembled by CFACT’s team in the States, we finally located the dirt access roads in the Amazon rainforest next to a military base.

The soldiers guarding the base blocked us from driving farther into this remote, obscure area, even though it was outside the base perimeter. The base commander himself emerged to discourage us from proceeding on foot toward the highway and warned it was dangerous due to “banditos” roaming the area.

Our translator, who accompanied us to this point, decided to remain behind with the vehicle.

Packing enough water for the 90-degree heat, we continued anyway, using GPS, though without cellphone or data service.

The dirt roads were not marked and were flooded in spots where the rainforest covered the roadways.

Eventually, we found it!

At the end of the hike, we found heavy construction vehicles strewn about a wide swath of clear-cut forest, including excavation tractors, graders, and rollers working away. Supply trucks and dump trucks occasionally moved in and out, while chainsaws buzzed nearby, cutting away still more rainforest in the midday heat.

The COP30 buzz all week has been about preserving the Amazon, helping the Indigenous communities there thrive, and preventing “deforestation.” Turns out a loophole the size of a tsunami made the phony deforestation agenda as clear as the midday sun.

The UN and Brazilian government wanted something, and their own climate soundbites were not going to block their conveniences — even if it meant destroying thousands of acres of the world’s most famous rainforest. No amount of bureaucratic spin about the highway’s “sustainable credentials” was going to justify.

The Avenida Liberdade highway may well be an economic necessity. Striking the right balance between economic need and preservation is a balance we at CFACT respect. Nonetheless, while the UN bureaucrats and Brazil’s President Lula, along with so many at this conference, demand sacrifice from every nation’s citizenry on energy use and standards of living, it’s clear that they view their own hypocrisy as something that never requires an apology, much less acknowledgment.

The BBC had photos from drones for its story on the highway. CFACT was on the ground, tangibly exposing more UN climate fraud on stilts.