ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE OF AMAZONIAN HIGHWAYS

Amazonian highways generate effects that extend beyond the physical footprint of road infrastructure, influencing ecological integrity, territorial dynamics, and institutional capacity to govern cumulative change. This article examines the environmental governance condition of the Manoel Urbano–Feijó segment of BR-364, in Acre, Brazil, through the application of ISRAM, a multidimensional corridor-scale diagnostic framework. The method integrates five analytical dimensions—Environmental, Technological, Economic, Social, and Institutional—standardized on a 0–1,000 scale to assess how fragility is distributed across interdependent components of corridor performance. Results indicate low overall performance (260.5/1,000), with concentrated weakness in the Environmental and Technological dimensions, revealing a persistent socioecological mismatch between infrastructural functioning, ecological connectivity, and governance capacity. In light of Brazilian Environmental Law, the article argues that environmental licensing remains indispensable, but its legal adequacy in corridor settings depends on territorially coherent area-of-influence definition, cumulative-effects appraisal, federative coordination, and adaptive monitoring beyond the immediate project footprint. Rather than replacing licensing or impact assessment, ISRAM is proposed as a complementary territorial diagnostic for interpreting corridor conditions under cumulative and cross-scalar pressures.