Location

 

 

Roads are like real estate — it’s all about ‘location, location, location’. A new road located in the rong place, such as one cutting through the heart of a forest, can provoke an environmental disaster, especially in frontier areas where illegal activities are common.

 

But in areas well-suited for farming and where most native forest has already been cleared, a high-quality road (or improvements, such as paving an existing dirt road) can actually be beneficial.

In such areas, good roads make it much easier to move crops to market and import fertilizers.

 

This increases farm yields and profits and improves the livelihoods of rural residents. And, like a giant magnet, such roads tend to attract migrants away from vulnerable wilderness areas, concentrating them in highly productive farming zones.