ESPECIAL: BELO MONTE

Survival Alert: Killer Dams Menace Brazilian Amazon

Human banner organized on June 19, 2012

Despite a massive international outcry by indigenous people, campaigners and the general public, the Brazilian government insists on pushing forward its Accelerated Growth Program, which aims to stimulate the country’s economic growth by building a huge infrastructure of roads and dams, many in the Amazon region.

The size of these projects threatens to harm, and in some cases destroy, vast areas of land upon which numerous tribal peoples, including several groups of highly vulnerable uncontacted Indians, depend for their survival.

The hugely controversial Belo Monte dam is a prime example. The dam, which is under construction on the Xingu River in the Brazilian state of Pará, will be the third largest hydroelectric plant in the world and the second-largest hydroelectric dam in Brazil.

The impacts of the mega-dam can only be described as devastating: Vast areas of rainforest will be flooded, parts of the Xingu river will dry up and fish stocks will be significantly reduced. Nature and wildlife won’t be the only living things to suffer from the destructive consequences.
The dam will also displace thousands of local people. The area around the Xingu River is home to many indigenous communities, including the Kayapó, Arara, Juruna, Araweté, Xikrin, Asurini and Parakanã Indians. If the dam goes ahead, it will destroy the livelihoods of many tribal people who depend on the forest and river for food and water.
In the 1980s, the notorious Carajás mine in the eastern part of Amazonia and its 550-mile-long railway devastated the nearby Awá tribe by opening up their land to settlers, ranchers and loggers.
In violation of Brazilian and international law, the Indians have never been properly consulted about the dam. In a letter to ex-President Luiz Inácio Lula, the Kayapó stated, “We don’t want this dam to destroy the ecosystems and the biodiversity that we have taken care of for millennia and which we can still preserve.”
The construction of the dam is also attracting large numbers of migrant workers and colonists who are bringing life-threatening diseases to the Indians. Troubling reports by FUNAI, Brazil’s Indian Affairs Department, indicate that there may be uncontacted Indians living near the site of the dam. They are most at risk; they have little or no resistance to outside diseases and the impacts of the dam could be fatal for them.
The government is also embarking on technical studies for the first in a series of dams along the Tapajós river. The Munduruku tribe, many of whom live by the river, are deeply opposed to the project. When it protested, the government sent in heavily armed police and national security agents to intimidate the Indians.

These dams are not the only industrial projects threating Brazil’s indigenous peoples. The Brazilian government is currently planning to allow large-scale mining in indigenous territories. One of the objectives of the government’s drive to build so many hydro-electric dams in the Amazon is to provide cheap energy to the mining companies which are poised to mine in indigenous lands.

History shows that such projects can bring great tragedy to indigenous communities.
In the 1980s, the notorious Carajás mine in the eastern part of Amazonia and its 550-mile-long railway devastated the nearby Awá tribe by opening up their land to settlers, ranchers and loggers.
Although their lands have been demarcated, they continue to be heavily invaded. Uncontacted Awá are highly vulnerable to diseases transmitted by outsiders and to attack. In recent decades, gunmen have targeted and killed dozens of uncontacted Awá, who are now Earth’s most threatened tribe. Despite a federal judge ordering the eviction of all illegal settlers by the end of March, Brazilian authorities have done nothing to remove the invaders.

The indigenous leaders of the Kayapó tribe speak not only for the tribes affected by the Belo Monte dam, but for all threatened indigenous people of Brazil, when they say, “The world must know what is happening here; they must perceive how destroying forests and indigenous people destroys the entire world.”

If the construction of these mega dams goes ahead, thousands of people will lose their homes, their livelihoods and their lives. Indigenous peoples depend on their land in order to survive and, having lived there for generations, they have a deep, spiritual link to it. No amount of compensation or mitigation measures can replace their ancestral land.

fonte

Brazil’s Belo Monte Dam
40,000 People Can Move or Drown: 9 Photos
The world’s third largest hydroelectric dam would submerge 580 square miles of rainforest, and the people and animals that live in it.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of the Belo Monte

The Belo Monte Dam is currently under construction on the Xingu River in northern Brazil. Once completed, the $18 billion project is expected to have the capacity to produce 11,233 megawatts of energy, putting it third in generating capacity behind The Three Gorges Dam and the Itaipu Dam.

Opponents claim the dam could displace up to 40,000 people and impact roughly 1,500 square kilometers of the Amazon River basin. And, according to one estimate, it will take 41 years for the dam to have a positive impact on greenhouse gas emissions.
Click through the gallery for a behind-the scenes-peek at one of the most controversial dams ever proposed. Photo: Indian Country

Presidential Seal of Approval

Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva gestures during a signing ceremony for the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant at Planalto Palace in Brasilia on August 26, 2010. After his reelection in 2006, Silva put the dam at the centerpiece of a massive plan to modernize Brazil's infrastructure. Photo: Roberto Jayme/Reuters

Global Disapproval

Actress Sigourney Weaver protests the construction of the dam in front of the Brazilian Permanent Mission to the United Nations on April 28, 2010, in New York City. A week earlier, the energy consortium Norte Energia, led by Brazil's state-owned Electrobas, won the bid for the Belo Monte Project. Initial projections put the cost of the project at under $11 billion.
Photo: Ben Hider/Getty Images

Real World Avatar

Oscar-winning director James Cameron shook hands with Raoni Txucarramae, of the Kaiapo indigenous tribe, after he spoke about the construction of the Belo Monte Dam along the Xingu River, during the Global Sustainability Forum in Manaus on March 25, 2011.
Cameron, who directed possibly the greenest movie ever, Avatar, visited Brazil many times in 2010 and 2011 to protest the construction of the dam, which he called the “quintessential example of the type of thing we are showing in Avatar—the collision of a technological civilization’s vision for progress at the expense of the natural world and the cultures of the indigenous people that live there. This is how the civilized world slowly, slowly pushes into the forest and takes away the world that used to be.”
Photo: Bruno Kelly/Reuters

Protests on the Streets, Battles in the Courts

Indigenous people burn a straw man representing newly elected Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff during a protest against the construction of Belo Monte Dam on August 20, 2011, in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Earlier that year, a federal court judge suspended Norte Enigra's construction license, a decision which halted the initial stages (deforestation and land clearing) of the building of the dam. But a week later, on March 5, 2011, the suspension was overturned by another judge, which allowed the construction to proceed.
Photo: Lunae Parracho/Getty Images

Drowning Lands, Moving Locals

An aerial view of Altamira, in the state of Para, Brazil. Altamira will be flooded by the Belo Monte dam, which is scheduled to begin operating in 2015. The construction of the dam will displace as many as 40,000 people—a great many being indigenous Brazilian tribesman—and drown as many as 1,500 square kilometers acres of forest, as well as the wildlife that live inhabit the Amazon.
Photo: Evaristo SA/Getty Images

Pare Belo Monte!

Indigenous tribesmen point bows and arrows at a police helicopter flying over the occupied barrier of the Belo Monte Dam's construction site in Vitoria do Xingu, near Altamira in northern Brazil on June 15, 2012. The Belo Monte dam area was occupied by around 300 activists, indigenous people, fishermen and coastal community members.
Photo: Lunae Parracho/Reuters

Let it Flow

Residents who are being displaced by the Belo Monte dam stand atop a temporary earthen dam at the construction site after removing a strip of land to restore the flow of the Xingu River. Their protests and legal challenges compelled a Brazilian judge to declare the Belo Monte dam project illegal on August 15, 2012—a declaration that managed to stand for an entire two weeks. Brazil's Supreme Court overturned the ruling on August 28, 2012. There is no higher judicial authority in Brazil than the Supreme Court.
Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images

Peace Talks?

After years of gains against destruction of the Amazon rainforest, Brazil appeared to be suffering from an increase in deforestation as farmers, loggers, miners and builders moved into previously untouched woodland, according to data compiled by the government and independent researchers. On March 26, 2013, Brazilian troops were dispatched to the Belo Monte Dam site for a period of 90 days. The request for troops was made by Brazilian Minister of Mining and Energy, Edison Lobao, after 150 protestors refused to leave the construction site.
Photo: Lunae Parracho/Reuters

PLAYLIST DE VÍDEOS | FOTOS

Cf.

40,000 People Can Move or Drown: 9 Photos of Brazil’s Belo Monte Dam
Petition: Protect the Amazon and Its Indigenous People from Brazilian Mega-Dam
5 Dams That Will Change Wildlife as We Know It
Sealing Our Fate: 8 of the World’s Worst Dams See Full Gallery
Interactive Dams in Amazônia database to learn about dams planned for the Amazon

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The Brazilian government is currently constructing what would be the world’s third-largest hydroelectric project on one of the Amazon’s major tributaries, the Xingu River. The Belo Monte Dam would divert the flow of the Xingu, devastate an extensive area of the Brazilian rainforest, displace over 20,000 people, and threaten the survival of indigenous tribes that depend on the river. (see map)
The most controversial dam project facing Brazil today, Belo Monte is a struggle about the future of Amazônia. The Brazilian government has plans to build more than 60 large dams in the Amazon Basin over the next 20 years. Many Brazilians believe that if Belo Monte is approved, it will represent a carte blanche for the destruction of all the magnificent rivers of the Amazon - next the Tapajós, the Teles Pires, then the Araguaia-Tocantins, and so on. The Amazon will become an endless series of lifeless reservoirs, its life drained away by giant walls of concrete and steel.

The government says the project will cost more than US$13 billion, but industry analysts say that due to the difficulties in building a project of this size in the Amazon, its cost could easily exceed US$18 billion. While the project will have an installed capacity of 11,233 MW, the dam would be highly inefficient, generating as little as 1000 MW during the 3-4 month low water season.

The project’s extremely high cost and the river’s large seasonal variations in flow have led many to believe that after completing Belo Monte, Brazil will build other dams upstream with greater storage capacity to guarantee there will be enough water for Belo Monte to generate electricity year-round.

What’s the true cost of Belo Monte Dam? The answer is that no one knows yet. What’s clear is that Belo Monte will be the one of the largest, most devastating infrastructure projects ever to be built in the Amazon.
International Rivers is working with affected communities, Kayapó and other indigenous groups, lawmakers, and environmental and human rights groups to protect the Xingu River Basin from large dams and to promote alternatives to meeting Brazil's energy needs.

More information:

mapa_belo_monte_2012.pdf

Instituto Socioambiental, buena fuente de notícias sobre la amazonía, con mapas temáticos de reservas indígenas, areas protegidas, problemas ambientales
Belo Monte Fact Sheet

Learn about Belo Monte using Google Earth
Read our latest fact sheet on the Belo Monte Dam Project.
Download our investor risk report on the Belo Monte Dam Project.
See all Amazon Campaign Blog Posts
Heart of Brazil Expedition, photo gallery and blog on the Xingu by Sue and Patrick Cunningham
Watch an awesome film about the Belo Monte Dam by Cultures of Resistence.
Visit our interactive Dams in Amazonia database to see planned dams for the Amazon Basin