"Multiplying Amazon river ports open new Brazil-to-China commodities routes", 19 November 2020

• Nearly 100 major industrial river ports have been built on the Brazilian Amazon’s major rivers over the past two decades. Many of the projects have been internationally financed and built by commodities companies with little government oversight.
• These ports have transformed the region, opening it to agribusiness and the export of commodities, especially soy, to China and the rest of the world. However, this boom in port infrastructure often came at the expense of the environment and traditional riverine communities. [...]

Recently, Chinese businesses began entering the game. Cofco, China’s major food trading company, is one of the main clients of Hidrovias do Brasil, a top player in Brazil’s river port industry. Heartened by its already successful Amazon port investments, Hidrovias do Brasil this year completed an initial public offering (IPO) of shares, raising $600 million. The Shanghai-based New Development Bank, known as the BRICS bank, also issued a $50 million loan to improve infrastructure in cities lining the Amazon’s BR-163 highway, which connects soy plantations in the agricultural heartland of Mato Grosso to the Tapajós River. [...]

Big companies flourish, traditional communities don’t

Major private investment continues flowing into the rainforest, along with a promise that new infrastructure will bring jobs. But many impacted traditional Amazon communities have seen poverty levels either stagnate or worsen. Barcarena, for example, a city in Pará state, has been deeply transformed in recent decades by mining and new river ports, with residents struggling to adapt to disruptive economic and cultural change. [...]