When the dam holding back a trailings pond from the Córrego do Feijão iron ore mine burst, some 13 million cubic meters (460 million cubic feet) of mud suddenly rushed through the valley.

Two-hundred-and-seventy people are thought to have been buried alive by the wave of mud, with local residents and employees of the Vale mining company among them. Four days after the accident, aid workers found the body of Helena’s son Luiz, and then the bodies of Camila and her father two days after that.

Luiz’s wife Fernanda was not found until 22 days later, and her mother-in-law is among those whom aid workers are still trying to find. Neither the mining company Vale nor any government authorities have ever contacted Helena.

“During the past year, I thought things were getting better, but the pain is still enormous — especially because we know that it could have been avoided,” the 62-year-old said.

A Clear Warning Ignored

The event shocked Brazil, especially as the public was already familiar with such images. Three years prior, another iron ore trailings dam had burst just 120 kilometers (75 miles) away from Brumadinho.

Nineteen people were killed in the city of Mariana, where thousands became homeless in an instant, and rivers in the region, including the Rio Doce, were heavily contaminated.

Vale, a subsidiary of the Samarco mining company, promised to quickly compensate victims and their families, as well as pledging to rebuild the region. Still, despite promises that such a tragedy would never be allowed to happen again, it did once again in Brumadinho. “Looking back, Mariana was a clear warning; unfortunately, that warning went unheeded,” says Helena Taliberti.

Mining expert Susanne Friess of the Germany-based Catholic aid organization Misereor visited Brumadinho two months before the dam burst. Her organization oversees a number of social and environmental projects in the mining region.

“At the time, a number of people told me they had been trying to protect local water sources and block the expansion of mining projects,” Friess tells. “They were also very concerned that a tragedy like that in Mariana could happen in Brumadinho.”

Lawsuit Against German Inspectors

Earlier this week, state prosecutors in the state of Minas Gerais filed manslaughter charges against 11 Vale managers as well as five employees of the German Technical Inspection Association (TÜV), which certifies dam safety.

Investigators claim that those responsible were well aware of the unstable nature of the dam, but consciously determined to hide that fact. Investigators also discovered a secret list of 10 other dangerous dams compiled by managers at Vale.

Susanne Friess sees that as a clear indication that the catastrophes at Mariana and Brumadinho share a common cause: “The companies were well aware of the situation, but neglected to act in either case. Therefore, I have to conclude that no lessons were learnt from the dam burst in Mariana.”

Still, Friess says the approach of Brazil’s prosecutors gives her grounds for hope. She says that during private conversations with prosecutors she has had the impression that they are determined to learn from past tragedies and ensure that nothing similar happens again in the future.

Yet, even now, she says, four years after the Mariana tragedy, the region is mired in chaos, with no one stepping up to take responsibility and companies and authorities unwilling to provide compensation to victims.

Ticking Time Bomb

Despite Friess’ optimism about prosecutors’ intentions, she says she gets an uneasy feeling when looking at Brazil’s 770 similar dams. “The construction and inspection of those dams represent a ticking time bomb. Those bombs could be defused, but that would require the political will to do so,” she says, adding, “They could be decommissioned and stabilized; that would at least delay any future catastrophe.”

According to media reports, some 55 Brazilian dams are currently being operated without proper certification, and another 41 have been temporarily shut down due to acute safety concerns.

“That is extremely worrisome for people living near those dams. They are completely incapable of deterring just how high the risks are,” says Friess. “They cannot count on authorities, nor can they count on the inspectors or the mining companies. And the big question is: Who can guarantee their safety?”

Brazil’s current federal government is intent on expanding mining in the country, even in the largely unspoiled Amazon region. When Susanne Friess thinks of the billions of tons of tailings that such a program would produce, she calls it “a nightmare scenario.”

“I don’t think mining can ever be sustainable. That concept itself is a contradiction,” she says, adding that the best one could ever hope for in that instance would be to avoid the worst possible catastrophes.

Yet Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, has so far seemed more interested in weakening the country’s environmental and safety standards rather than strengthening them. “The political power constellation does not look good right now,” says Friess.

DW

Thirty four bodies had been recovered by Saturday afternoon, said Avimar de Melo Barcelos, the mayor of the town of Brumadinho where the dam burst in the mining-heavy state of Minas Gerais. The toll was expected to rise sharply.

Vale Chief Executive Fabio Schvartsman said only one-third of the roughly 300 workers at the site had been accounted for. He said a torrent of sludge tore through the mine’s offices, including a cafeteria during lunchtime.

Minas Gerais is still recovering from the collapse in November 2015 of a larger dam that killed 19 people in Brazil’s worst environmental disaster. That dam, owned by the Samarco Mineração SA joint venture between Vale and BHP Billiton, buried a village and poured toxic waste into a major river.

Schvartsman said the dam that burst on Friday at the Feijão iron mine was being decommissioned and had a capacity of 12 million cubic meters – a fraction of the roughly 60 million cubic meters of toxic waste released by the Samarco dam break.

“The environmental impact should be much less, but the human tragedy is horrible,” he told journalists at Vale’s offices in Rio de Janeiro. He said equipment had shown the dam was stable on January 10 and it was too soon to say why it collapsed.

Television footage showed a vast swathe of thick red mud scarring the verdant hills below the mine, cutting through farms and residential areas and leveling everything in its wake.

Fire brigade spokesman Lieutenant Pedro Aihara said the torrent of mud stopped just short of the local Paraopeba river, a tributary of Brazil’s longest river, the Sao Francisco.

“Our main worry now is to quickly find out where the missing people are,” Aihara said on GloboNews cable television channel. Scores of people were trapped in nearby areas flooded by the river of sludge released by the dam failure.

Helicopters plucked people covered in mud from the disaster area, including a woman with a fractured hip who was among eight injured people taken to hospital, officials said.

The Inhotim Institute, a world-famous outdoor contemporary art museum a few miles from downtown Brumadinho, evacuated visitors and closed its doors out of precaution.

The Feijão mine is one of four in Vale’s Paraopeba complex, which includes two processing plants and produced 26 million tons of iron ore in 2017, or about 7% of Vale’s total output, according to information on the company’s website. Feijão alone produced 7.8 million tons of ore in 2017.

Brazil’s recently inaugurated President Jair Bolsonaro dispatched three ministers to survey the disaster area and visit himself the region on Saturday.

Former environmental minister and presidential candidate Marina Silva said Brazilian authorities and private miners had not learned anything from the 2015 Samarco disaster near the city of Mariana and called it unacceptable.

Operations at Samarco remain halted over new licensing, while the companies have worked to pay damages out of court, including an agreement that quashed a 20 billion reais (US$ 5.31 billion) civil lawsuit last year. Federal prosecutors suspended but have still not closed an even larger lawsuit.

“Three years after the serious environmental crime in Mariana, with investigations still ongoing and no one punished, history repeats itself as tragedy in Brumadinho,” Silva said on Twitter.

Mercopress

Costing 30 billion reais (US$ 7.7 billion), Belo Monte is important not only for the scale of its construction but also the scope of opposition to it. The project was first proposed in the 1970s, and ever since then, local indigenous communities, civil society and even global celebrities have engaged in numerous acts of direct and indirect action against it.

While previous incarnations had been canceled, Belo Monte is now in the final stages of construction and already provides 11,233 megawatts of energy to 60 million Brazilians across the country. When complete, it will be the largest hydroelectric power plant in the Amazon and the fourth largest in the world.

A ‘Sustainable’ Project?

The dam is to be operated by the Norte Energia consortium (formed of a number of state electrical utilities) and is heavily funded by the Brazilian state development bank, BNDES. The project’s supporters, including the governments of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party) that held office between 2003 and 2011, have justified its construction on environmental grounds.

They describe Belo Monte as a “sustainable” project, linking it to wider policies of climate change mitigation and a transition away from fossil fuels. The assertions of the sustainability of hydropower are not only seen in Brazil but can be found across the globe – with large dams presented as part of wider sustainable development agendas.

With hydropower representing 16.4% of total global installed energy capacity, hydroelectric dams are a significant part of efforts to reduce carbon emissions. More than 2,000 such projects are currently funded via the Clean Development Mechanism of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol – second only to wind power by number of individual projects.

While this provides mega-dams with an environmental seal of approval, it overlooks their numerous impacts. As a result, dams funded by the CDM are contested across the globe, with popular opposition movements highlighting the impacts of these projects and challenging their asserted sustainability.

Beautiful Hill, to Beautiful Monster

Those standing against Belo Monte have highlighted its social and environmental impacts. An influx of 100,000 construction and service workers has transformed the nearby city of Altamira, for instance.

Hundreds of workers – unable to find employment – took to sleeping on the streets. Drug traffickers also moved in and crime and violence soared in the city. The murder rate in Altamira increased by 147% during the years of Belo Monte construction, with it becoming the deadliest city on earth in 2015.

In 2013, police raided a building near the construction site to find 15 women, held against their will and forced into sex work. Researchers later found that the peak hours of visits to their building – and others – coincided with the payday of those working on Belo Monte (Beautiful Hill). In light of this social trauma, opposition actors gave the project a new moniker: Belo Monstro, meaning “Beautiful Monster”.

The construction of Belo Monte is further linked to increasing patterns of deforestation in the region. In 2011, deforestation in Brazil was highest in the area around Belo Monte, with the dam not only deforesting the immediate area but stimulating further encroachment.

In building roads to carry both people and equipment, the project has opened up the wider area of rainforest to encroachment and illegal deforestation. Greenpeace has linked illegal deforestation in indigenous reserves – more than 200 km away – to the construction of the project, with the wood later sold to those building the dam.

Brazil’s past success in reversing deforestation rates became a key part of the country’s environmental movement. Yet recently deforestation has increased once again, leading to widespread international criticism. With increasing awareness of the problem, the links between hydropower and the loss of the Amazon rainforest challenge the continued viability of Belo Monte and similar projects.

Big Dams, Big Problems

While the Clean Development Mechanism focuses on the reduction of carbon emissions, it overlooks other greenhouse gases emitted by hydropower. Large dams effectively emit significant quantities of methane for instance, released by the decomposition of plants and trees below the reservoir’s surface. While methane does not stay in the atmosphere for as long as carbon dioxide (only persisting for up to 12 years), its warming potential is far higher.

Belo Monte has been linked to these methane emissions by numerous opposition actors. Further research has found that the vegetation rotting in the reservoirs of dams across the globe may emit a million tons of greenhouse gases per year. As a result, it is claimed that these projects are – in fact – making a net contribution to climate change.

Far from providing a sustainable, renewable energy solution in a climate-changed world, Belo Monte is instead cast as exacerbating the problem that it is meant to solve.

Belo Monte is just one of many dams across the globe that have been justified – and funded – as sustainable pursuits. Yet, this conflates the ends with the means.

Hydroelectricity may appear relatively “clean” but the process in which a mega-dam is built is far from it. The environmental credentials of these projects remain contested, with Belo Monte providing just one example of how the sustainability label may finally be slipping.

Ed Atkins is a senior teaching associate at School of Geographical Sciences in University of Bristol

This article was originally published in The Conversation. Read the original article here: https://theconversation.com/belo-monte-there-is-nothing-green-or-sustainable-about-these-mega-dams-98025

The Temer government claims the decision is a response to intense resistance from environmentalists and indigenous groups, but while that may be part of the reason, experts see other causes as well.

The decline in political influence of Brazil’s gigantic construction companies caused by the Lava Jato (Car Wash) corruption investigation is likely a major cause of the change in policy.

So is the current depressed state of Brazil’s economy, which makes it unlikely that Brazil’s huge development bank (BNDES) will invest in such multi-billion dollar projects.

While environmentalists and indigenous groups will likely celebrate the shift away from the mega-dam policy, experts warn that many threats to the Amazon remain, including pressure by Brazil’s ruralist lobby to open up conserved areas and indigenous lands to agribusiness, along with threats posed by new road, rail, waterway and mining projects.

In a surprise move, the Brazilian government has announced that the era of building big hydroelectric dams in the Amazon basin, long criticized by environmentalists and indigenous groups, is ending.

“We are not prejudiced against big [hydroelectric] projects, but we have to respect the views of society, which views them with restrictions,” Paulo Pedrosa, the Executive Secretary of the Ministry of Mines and Energy, told O Globo newspaper.

According to Pedrosa, Brazil has the potential to generate an additional 50 gigawatts of energy by 2050 through the building of new dams but, of this total, only 23 percent would not affect in some way indigenous land, quilombolas (communities set up by runaway slaves) and federally protected areas. The government, he says, doesn’t have the stomach to take on the battles.

Pedrosa went on: “Nor are we disposed to take actions that mask the costs and the risks [of hydroelectric projects].” This statement seems to refer to the actions of previous governments, particularly under President Dilma Rousseff and the Workers’ Party (PT), which made it difficult to evaluate the real expense and environmental impact of large dams, such as Belo Monte on the Xingu River. It was only after construction of this particular dam that the huge cost – financial, social and environmental – was fully revealed.

That’s one reason such mega-projects began meeting with a rising storm of protest. For example, in 2016, after many indigenous demonstrations, the Rousseff administration suspended the building of a large dam on the Tapajós river – São Luiz do Tapajós – which would have flooded part of the Munduruku indigenous territory of Sawre-Muybu.

However, because the government never officially canceled the dam, Indians and environmentalists have long feared that the project could be relaunched at any moment by the Temer administration. However, according to O Globo, the Ministry of Mines and Energy has announced that it will “no longer fight for the [São Luiz do Tapajós] project.”

“I don’t think any more big hydro dams will be built,” said Mauro Maura Severino, a lecturer in electric energy at the University of Brasília. “Brazil should move towards clean energy, like solar and wind.”

João Carlos Mello, from Thymos Energia, a consulting company, agreed: “The future lies with renewable energy, such as wind, and much smaller dams. The tendency will be to generate the energy much nearer to where it will be consumed.”

While the Temer administration hasn’t said so, experts say there is no doubt that hard economic realities played a chief role in the government’s turnabout.

In the past, the huge Brazilian development bank, BNDES (National Bank of Economic and Social Development), subsidized mega-dams to the tune of billions of dollars, funneling the money through state companies, which became powerful as a result.

For example, Eletrobrás, Latin America’s biggest utility company, owns 49.98 percent of Belo Monte. Furnas, a regional power utility and Eletrobras subsidiary, owns 39 percent of the Santo Antônio hydroelectric project and, through its subsidiaries, 40 percent of the Jirau dams – both large, controversial projects built on the Madeira River.

However, in August of last year, Temer stunned the market by announcing the privatization of Eletrobras. Edvaldo Santana, the former director of ANEEL (the National Agency of Electric Energy), said:

“The privatization of Eletrobrás is a relevant factor [in the change of policy regarding mega-dams]. Neither Belo Monte nor Santo Antônio nor Jirau would have existed – or would have taken much longer to build – without Eletrobras” and the infusion of cash from BNDES.

Brazil’s political climate has also changed since the heyday of mega-dam construction under presidents Lula and Rousseff. By 2016, for example, when Mongabay wrote a series of articles about BNDES and its funding of the big Amazon dams, it could no longer find anyone – not even an engineer or an energy expert – willing to defend the Belo Monte dam.

Although few were willing to speak on record then, many agreed that the only reason Belo Monte was built was because the PT government needed a big construction project by which the political party could pay back the big construction companies, like Odebrecht, for the huge sums in illegal electoral campaign contributions the firms had provided.

Such deals are no longer possible thanks to the far-reaching corruption scandal known as Lava-Jato (Car Wash) that ensnared a vast swath of Brazil’s political and business elite, including top executives from major construction companies. Investigations are ongoing.

Back in 2016, Felício Pontes, a MPF Prosecutor in the state of Pará, said: “The factor that explains the irrational option for hydroelectric stations in the Amazon is corruption… In other words, energy planning in Brazil is not treated as a strategic issue involving the future of the nation but, at least since the time of the military dictatorship, as a source of money for construction companies and politicians. I think that, until these questions are exposed and resolved, we will continue to have expensive and inefficient dams that have a serious social and environmental impact in Amazonia.”

The government’s hydroelectric dams policy change announced this week will surely be greeted as a hopeful sign by environmentalists and indigenous groups. But experts warn that a much bigger strategic policy shift is needed regarding infrastructure planning and agribusiness before the Amazon can be deemed safe from major deforestation.

Over the last 18 months, the bancada ruralista, the rural lobby in Congress, has won victory after victory, leading to policies meant to benefit agribusiness while threatening conservation units and indigenous territories.

That drive seems likely to intensify in the months leading up to October’s presidential election. There is, for example, still talk of a hugely environmentally harmful project that would turn the Tapajós river basin into an industrial waterway, with its tributaries and main stem dredged and rapids dynamited.

Hydroelectric dams have caused great damage to indigenous and traditional communities and the environment, but they are only one of many serious Amazon threats – new roads, railways, waterways, mines and other infrastructure all result in great destruction.

While the just-announced shift in hydropower policy is important, experts agree that major changes are needed before one can talk of a real conservation breakthrough in the Brazilian Amazon.

This article appeared originally in Mongabay – https://news.mongabay.com

In the late 1970s, Raimunda Gomes da Silva and her husband, João Pereira da Silva, moved to Tucuruí in Pará state. João went to work on the dam being built there. With the money he earned, the couple bought a plot of land and built a home.

“This same money that we bought with the dam, the dam took back,” Raimunda said during an interview in Altamira.

“Our land was flooded. Our house was flooded. So we left Tucuruí and, in the 90s, landed on the island.” The island Raimunda refers to lies in the Xingu River, also in Pará state. While it offered the couple a safe haven for some twenty years, another big hydroelectric dam, Belo Monte, forced them out. This time, João suffered a stroke, which Raimunda says turned him from her husband into a child.

Tragic stories of displacement and loss like this one are fairly common in the Brazilian Amazon as new dams are built. But what is little mentioned in the retelling is the intimate relationship between the hydropower boom and a thriving mining industry with its hunger for thousands of megawatts of generating capacity.

Some 40 new dams with generating capacities of more than 30 megawatts (MW) are slated for the Brazilian Amazon over the next twenty years. Meanwhile the Ministry of Mines and Energy’s National Mining Plan 2030 calls Amazonia “the current frontier of expansion for mining in Brazil, which sparks optimism and, at the same time, concerns.”

Victims of Mining Expansion

One of the central concerns identified by Brazil’s mining plan is the clash between land use and occupation (such as that experienced by Raimunda and João).

Conflicts arise over widely divergent views regarding development, where the lives and livelihoods of indigenous and traditional inhabitants collide with the interests of large, export-driven, capital-intensive mega-mining and dam projects designed by corporations and supported by the government.

Raimunda and João’s lives were upended twice by the mining industry’s energy demands. The link was explicit with the Tucuruí dam, built on the Tocantins River primarily to power nearby aluminum production facilities.

According to 1987 projections by Electronorte made three years after the dam was completed, 49.9 percent of Tucuruí’s energy was destined for aluminum and alumina production at Albrás in Bacarena and Alumar in São Luís, Maranhão.

Likewise with the couple’s relocation from the island on the Xingu River. Canadian gold mining firm Belo Sun plans to open the largest gold mine in Brazil adjacent to the new Belo Monte dam. The firm’s website claims more than a million ounces of gold can be garnered from the mine and that its energy will come directly from a substation at Belo Monte.

Still, the website indicates there is only about 1 gram of gold per ton. According to mining engineer Juan Doblas, who works with the environmental advocacy group Instituto SocioAmbiental (ISA), without the dam’s energy, the mine wouldn’t be feasible.

Mining Energy Use

With the introduction in 1995 of Brazil’s National Interconnected System (SIN) electrical transmission grid, it has become harder to pinpoint the direct relationship between a specific new dam and foundries.

Philip Fearnside, a researcher who focuses on Brazilian hydropower dams and climate change, described the change. “Before, with Tucuruí, there was a special transmission line that was straight from there. Two of them: one to [Albrás] and one to Alumar. Whereas now it’s all mixed in the SIN.”

Still, residents along the Tapajós River are highly suspicious concerning the true purpose behind the controversial São Luiz de Tapajós mega-dam. Many believe its 10,000 MW of generating power were destined for the nearby Juruti bauxite mine to make aluminum for export.

Environmental activists, indigenous communities and traditional riverside dwellers in the Tapajós River basin recently fought successfully to halt construction of São Luiz de Tapajós. IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental regulatory agency, archived the project last year. Nonetheless, opponents are concerned that the government could re-start the project any time.

Interviewed shortly after IBAMA’s decision last year, Cacique Juarez Saw Munduruku of the Sawré Muybu indigenous community, revealed he wasn’t resting easy.

“I worry a little. I worry because I don’t believe in the Brazilian government. They could appeal the decision on the licensing to re-start the studies. That’s my concern. So that’s why we can’t stop fighting. We’re going to keep fighting until the government abandons building anywhere on the Tapajós because the Tapajós is part of the Munduruku.”

A spokesperson for Alcoa, which operates the Juruti mine, countered that producing energy at the São Luiz de Tapajós dam wouldn’t necessarily benefit them. “From the energy perspective, Juruti’s connection to the grid depends on transmission infrastructure, not on new generation.”

Though SIN has erased the obvious one-to-one link between a particular dam and a particular mine, that doesn’t diminish the mining industry’s urgent need for energy, which can be met by Amazon hydropower.

The Pará state Mining Plan 2013-2030 issued by the Secretary of Economic Development, Mining and Energy makes clear that a lack of affordable energy stands in the way of attracting new investments.

The plan affirms that a lack of energy “represents a significant challenge to the growth of the state’s industrial chain,” which ultimately “threatens the aluminum industry itself in Brazil.”

Amazonian Mineral Wealth

The northern Brazilian state of Pará, traversed by the lower Amazon River and major tributaries including the Tapajós and Xingu rivers, is one of Brazil’s leading mineral producers. It also illustrates Brazil’s mineral wealth.

The state’s Secretary of Economic Development, Mining and Energy (SEDEME) stated that the mining sector makes up two-thirds of Pará’s exports and accounts for 13 percent of the state’s Gross Domestic Product. An overwhelming 85 percent of Brazil’s total bauxite originates in Pará, SEDEME said.

Bauxite is the essential ore needed in the highly energy-intensive process for making aluminum. Alcoa has been operating the Juruti mine on the western edge of Pará state since 2006. Juruti sits atop what some estimate to be the largest bauxite deposit in the world.

Lúcio Flávio Pinto, a recognized journalist from the region, estimates that its three strata layers hold 700 million tons of bauxite. Alcoa says there are 21.1 million bone-dry metric tons (bdmt) there.

The company’s website notes that Alcoa World Alumina and Chemicals (AWAC) has contracts for its bauxite with customers in China, Brazil, Europe and the United States, and the company estimates the value of these 2017 third-party supply agreements at nearly $665 million.

Bauxite is Brazil’s second-largest mineral export, with 10.4 million tons sent abroad in 2016. Manganese is third with two million tons. In terms of market value, however, gold is Brazil’s second most important mineral. Gold exports in 2016 were valued at US$ 2.89 billion.

Iron ore is Brazil’s largest mineral export, although price slumps halved its value from nearly US$ 26 billion in 2014 to just over US$ 13 billion in 2016. Still, the amounts mined stayed relatively stable, increasing from 344 million tons in 2014 to 373.9 million tons in 2016.

Minerals such as these are critical to the world economy and ubiquitous to daily life. People across the world use aluminum in cell phones, bicycles and cars, for example. And the power from hydroelectric dams ensures that refrigerators, lights and air conditioning keep running.

Still, Brazil’s citizens and environment pay for the country’s commitment to large-scale mining — and for its lack of commitment to safety and stewardship. For example, the country’s largest-ever environmental disaster occurred in 2015, when the Fundão iron mine tailings dam failed in Minas Gerais.

The dam collapse killed 19 people and impacted 1.6 million people in the region. Its failure poured 50 million tons of ore and toxic waste into Brazil’s Doce River, polluting the stream and croplands, killing fish and wildlife.

It also contaminated drinking water with toxic sludge for the river’s 853-kilometer (530 mile) length. People in Pará worry because the same technology is now being proposed to store waste from Belo Sun’s proposed gold mine near the Belo Monte dam.

Similarly, Alcoa’s Juruti mine has been controversial since its inception, and has seen public mobilization and protests against its negative social and environmental impacts, such as water pollution.

The Tucuruí dam, which was built before Brazil passed a law requiring environmental impact assessments prior to construction, eliminated 1,783 square kilometers (688 square miles) of forested land, displaced indigenous and traditional riverside dwellers, and damaged fisheries.

Fearnside argues that since so much power from the dam was committed to aluminum production, other dams had to be built to provide electricity to cities in the region. Further, like other dams in the tropics, rotting vegetation in the reservoir produces methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas.

These impacts, he wrote, can only be properly assessed once it’s clear who benefits from a dam. “Unfortunately, this did not occur in the case of Tucuruí, which mainly benefits multinational aluminum companies.”

Marriage of Mining and Dams

The relationship between mining and hydropower is easily explained: the mining and processing of metals, particularly aluminum, requires vast amounts of electricity. Fearnside reports that fifty percent of Alcoa’s overhead at its Albrás and Alumar facilities stem from energy costs, that’s according to a statement by the company’s Latin America and the Caribbean Director at the 2010 International Aluminum Conference in São Paulo, Brazil.

However, the abundance of rivers in the Amazon basin combined with the region’s impressive mineral wealth, have made it attractive for planners to think strategically about supplying the energy for processing ore through hydropower.

The hitch, according to Doblas, is that little heed is being paid to the environmental and social consequences of this strategy. “The truth is that installing a hydropower dam provokes the installation of mining projects. This never, or extremely rarely, is integrated into the licensing process as a synergetic effect.”

In Ocekadi, a book published by International Rivers last year, Daniela Fernandes Alarcon, Maurício Torres and Natalia Ribas Guerrero highlight the financial interests — including mining — behind the infrastructure plans in the Tapajós region, pointing to evidence in Brazil’s media.

For example, in 2011, the Folha de São Paulo, one of Brazil’s most respected newspapers, reported on a round of investment aimed at the Amazon region, and concluded that: “the electricity sector is the driving force behind this investment.”

The report described plans for hydroelectric dams such as Belo Monte on the Xingu River, Santo Antonio on the Teles Pires River and the São Luiz de Tapajós project. It said that these dams should produce a 13-percent increase in energy from the region and thus “[become] one of the engines for growth.”

The Amazon basin, and Pará state in particular, offer several clear examples of mines associated with hydropower projects. Besides the Tucuruí dam and the foundries in Bacarena and São Luis, there is also the bauxite mine at Paragominas which the Norwegian firm Hydro acquired from Alcoa last year. Although not active yet, the Belo Sun gold mine would take advantage of the Belo Monte dam’s power supply.

Itaituba is a small city on the Tapajós River that has been a hub for the gold mining industry since the 1980s. Mongabay reached out to members of Itaituba’s Chamber of Commerce to get their perspective on the benefits of mining and dams to the region, but they declined to comment.

Generally, proposed Amazon hydropower dams are dissociated from the mining they will support. The 2,350 MW Cachoeira Porteira dam, for example, was first proposed in the 1980s as an alternative power supply for the city of Manaus and has yet to be built. But the prospective location is in Pará on the Trombetas River near Cruz Alta, home to a large bauxite deposit that Mineração Rio do Norte (MRN) aims to begin mining in 2022.

Complicating matters, the bauxite lies underneath land claimed by a quilombola, a community of the descendants of escaped slaves. The slow titling process which would give a land deed to the community, and the proximity of the mining interests offer an example of simmering land rights tensions in the region.

MRN is a consortium made of up mining companies including Vale, Alcoa, BHP Billiton, RioTintoAlcan, CBA, and the Norwegian firm Hydro. A spokesperson for MRN said that the company has no relationship with the Cachoeira Porteira dam project or any other hydroelectric dam along the Trombetas River. He also said: “There are no conflicts between MRN and quilombola communities that seek land titling.”

Yet Lúcia Andrade of the Pro-Indian Commission disputed this. “Since 2013, MRN has been expanding its extraction area inside the quilombola territories. Now, in April 2017, MRN requested a preliminary license to expand mining even further onto Quilombola land.”

For Doblas, the idea that MRN has no interest in the Cachoeira Porteira dam is laughable. “The mining companies aren’t paying for these projects directly. They’re not lobbying for these projects. But they will benefit, and these projects will facilitate the arrival of more mining.”

Dams are just one element in a growing infrastructure web in the Amazon. New roads, railway lines and shipping canals, facilitated by locks associated with dams, are being planned in the Tapajós basin and elsewhere to cheaply transport commodities.

For Greenpeace’s Danicley Aguiar, this development is taking place without prioritizing the interests and needs of the region’s most vulnerable: “You have a construction boom, and you get a surge in job opportunities and what-not, but once the project is done, the only winners are short-term interests.”

The Belo Monte dam’s reservoir showing how dry weather has reduced its water level and exposed trees that had previously been submerged. This fluctuation in water levels contributes significantly to greenhouse gas formation when new plant growth on exposed ground is covered again with water and decomposes.

As a result, Amazon dams contribute to climate change, so they not only have local and regional environmental impacts, but also global ones. Photo by Zoe Sullivan
Industry lobbies government

Interests such as mining and agribusiness make their influence felt in Brasilia. Aluminum exporters, for example, have been given large breaks on their energy costs, and they pay a lower tax rate than companies that produce for the domestic market.

Corporate profitability, for example, was guaranteed to Albrás in the final years of Brazil’s dictatorship. At the time, the government granted Albrás a 20-year energy contract that guaranteed the price of electricity wouldn’t exceed 20 percent of the global price of aluminum, ensuring ongoing profits.

Fearnside reports that the contract was renewed in 2004 with substantial new subsidies. Norwegian firm Hydro is now the majority shareholder in Albrás, along with a consortium of Japanese companies.

Aluminum exports are likewise exempt from the country’s main tax, ICMS, (Imposto sobre Circulação de Mercadorias e Serviços – Tax on Circulation of Merchandise and Services). Since aluminum produced in the Amazon is mainly for export, this has a significant impact.

Fearnside says that Albrás and Alumar pay roughly 8 percent in taxes once incentives and other benefits are taken into consideration. Their colleagues in the southern part of the country, producing for the domestic market, pay a 20 percent tax rate. This corporate welfare impacts competitiveness, giving exporters a serious advantage.

“Our raw materials leave without paying taxes, so we are still like a colony from the early times of our history,” Eduardo Costa told Mongabay. Costa is a physician and has been a conservative member of Pará’s state legislature since 2002.

He argues that Brazil’s Kandir law, which would allow states to tax unfinished goods, needs to be implemented urgently. Since only finished goods are taxed, Costa says, the state is losing out on a significant potential stream of revenue because both ore and the energy produced by hydropower dams leaves the state untaxed.

“Neither mining, which the Kandir law [neglects] and has been costing the state for years, nor our own energy production generate dividends for the state,” he told Mongabay.

At the same time, he said, dams and other projects have social impacts. “There are areas of misery that were created by these mega-projects,” Costa told Mongabay, describing the dramatic increase in violence in Altamira since the construction of the nearby Belo Monte dam.

While some companies benefit, Brazil accumulates a series of financial, social and environmental impacts. In 2013, Brazil exported aluminum bars worth US $789.9 million, generating US $63.2 million in tax income, a figure Fearnside’s book calls “minuscule in comparison to the financial cost and the damages inflicted by the hydroelectric dams that are behind the industry.”

He argues as well that substantial government subsidies for export-oriented industries end up undercutting the power of domestically-focused industries. This has shifted the balance of political influence to exporters through a feedback loop that means they are likely to see more policies enacted that benefit them, such as dam, canal and railway construction.

The Resource Curse

Raimunda and João’s story brings the human impact of mining and dam construction into focus. It is also an example of the “resource curse” — a phenomenon in which many of the world’s most mineral-wealthy countries nonetheless report staggering levels of poverty and inequality.

Experiences like those of Raimunda and João are the focus for Daniel Rondinelli Roquetti’s doctoral research at the University of São Paulo. He is studying the lifestyle changes faced by people who have been displaced by hydropower dams.

“Brazil generally exports people’s lives in aluminum bars,” he says. “There are a series of impacts in terms of human rights and environmental damage.” These impacts, Roquetti argues, don’t figure into costs the country shoulders to produce aluminum.

Before the Belo Monte dam was built, Raimunda and João split their time between their island home where they fished, gathered fruit, and planted vegetables; and a city home that gave them access to markets to sell their produce.

Their city home was a humble place in an informal community next to the river’s edge, minutes from central Altamira. The community flooded seasonally, yet was vibrant with fisherfolk and other families.

Now the couple lives in a cinder block house in a resettlement community four kilometers from the river. Since there’s no public transportation, Raimunda must pay for a motorbike taxi to get from the house to the city center. The informal social network the couple once enjoyed has been disrupted because all the riverside families have been displaced.

In the shady gap between their cinder block house and the concrete wall surrounding it live Raimunda’s tortoises. She feeds them tomatoes and other vegetables. She also identifies with them. “I’ve promised not to eat them,” she explains.

Once she and João can return to their island, Raimunda has promised to free the creatures. “I’m going to live where I like, and they’re going to live where they need to be.”

This article appeared originally in Mongabay – https://news.mongabay.com

They are reoccupying the riverbanks along the dam’s 200-square-mile reservoir. Belo Monte is the third largest hydroelectric project in the world.

As of February 2017, there were over 100 people occupying the reservoir. They have publicly declared that they are in the process of resettling the area.

The Xingu River is a 1,200-mile tributary of the Amazon River and is at the heart of the lives and homes of thousands of indigenous and various forest-dwelling communities.

The reoccupation action started after a November 2016 meeting when hundreds of locals assembled in the northern Amazonian city of Altamira (news is often slow to travel outside of Brazil). Altamira served as a staging area during the dam’s construction.

At the meeting, local fisherman known as “river people” (ribeirinhos) and indigenous communities condemned Norte Energia, the consortium behind the multibillion-dollar dam project for what they claim is an unsuccessful compensation scheme and a failure to listen to their concerns.

Norte Energia has strenuously denied claims of a failed compensation scheme.

Crews finished construction of the dam and filled the reservoir in 2015, though turbines are still being built. In total, the Belo Monte complex has displaced about 20,000 people, according to estimates by global nonprofits such as International Rivers. The Brazilian advocacy group Xingu Vivo has put the number much higher, at over 50,000.

In the first two years of construction Altamira’s population surged to well over 100,000 and millions of dollars poured into the city, but the city now has seen a spike in joblessness and violence. A month after construction ended, 20,000 workers were laid off, and the economy in Altamira fell 52 percent, according to local reports on the news site Amazônia.

More than 800 people attended the November public assembly, organized by the public prosecutor’s office of Altamira, which addressed the social and environmental impacts of the 11,000-megawatt dam.

Representatives of Norte Energia and IBAMA were present. IBAMA is Brazil’s environmental authority and the licensing body of the project. It maintains a permanent channel of conversation with FUNAI (Brazil’s Indian Affairs Department) for any matters related to indigenous people.

There were also organizations supporting communities adversely affected by the dam. They included the Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA), the local advocacy group Xingu Vivo, and the Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science (SBPC), among others.

The ISA is a Brazilian nonprofit civil society organization that works on socially responsible solutions to environmental challenges.

During the meeting, a group representing over 300 families of ribeirinhos displaced by Belo Monte announced that its members intended to resettle along the shores of the reservoir. They also announced the formation of a “river peoples’ committee” to fight against Norte Energia and lobby for adequate compensation.

“Norte Energia will try and divide us, but we must resist,” said Gilmar Gomes, a representative of the ribeirinhos’ committee.

Change in Stature

Local ribeirinho families, some of which now occupy the Belo Monte reservoir, are known as “river people” because they live along the rivers and survive largely by fishing.

They have a shared history going back more than 100 years when the rubber boom opened up Brazil’s Amazonian interior to settlers that included their parents and grandparents.

Over time, they have developed their own unique customs and means of living. Until recently, being called a ribeirinho was a pejorative term, and it was used as a slur.

Crucially, they are now recognized as a social group with a specific way of life. Before, they were simply seen as fishermen, explains Ana de Francisco, 34, an anthropologist contracted by ISA who researches ribeirinho communities.

“[Now] that is just an economic term,” de Francesco said. She explained that reducing them to mere “fishermen” is a way to deny their history. “It says nothing about their way of life,” she added. Now, ribeirinhos are working to reclaim the term, as well as the river, rebuilding homes along the shores of the reservoir.

Future Plans

Thousands of families affected by the dam have been compensated and relocated. But many – including anthropologists, health experts and lawyers who have accompanied the process – argue that compensation was incomplete or non-existent.

There have also issues at the federal level with the basic functions of the project. Since 2014, Belo Monte has had its operating license suspended several times by Brazil’s environmental authority, IBAMA, for failing to comply with its agreed-to compensation scheme.

Norte Energia has been accused of using only 28 percent of the resources set aside to compensate those affected by the dam, according to the ISA.

In response to a request for comment on the ribeirinho committee and resettlement process Norte Energia said it remains in contact with community leaders.

“On a semi-annual basis, the company reports its activities in the socio-environmental area to IBAMA,” the company said in an emailed statement. However, Norte Energia did not comment specifically on the reoccupation or the ribeirinhos’ committee.

For the ribeirinhos, returning to their old way of life will present huge challenges; since the river was dammed, fish stocks have plummeted.

“This is going to take years, many years,” ISA’s de Francisco said. “It will take at least five years for the fish to come back … they are going back to a lake, to a totally new environment. So they will have to adapt. The question of how they will divide themselves on the land, how they will reconnect as neighbors and they will produce is a big question.”

Hydropower’s Impact

Hydropower makes up about 80 percent of Brazil’s energy production, according to the International Energy Agency. Though it is often touted as a green solution to energy concerns, the scientific community largely sees it as an environmentally and socially damaging way to generate energy.

It can significantly impact natural habitats, land use and homes in the area of the dam. Though the number displaced by Belo Monte pales in comparison to the Three Gorges Dam in China, the world’s largest – which displaced over 1.2 million people – it has had a devastating impact on the local ecosystem of this remote jungle region and the people that depend on it.

The construction of the dam has also come at a time when changing weather patters appear to be impinging on the livelihoods of people in the region. Ribeirinhos report hotter and drier seasons, which affect the river’s fish populations they rely on.

Recent scientific research on the Xingu River points to climate change as a possible cause. Brazil-based biologist Cristian Costa Carneira confirmed the changes in a recent interview. Carneira, who researches aquatic fauna, is part of an ongoing study under the auspices of the Federal University of Pará that measures the effects of manmade climate change on the Xingu River in Pará.

“We are seeing extremes in weather that are very abnormal,” said Carneira.

Separately, Norte Energia is in the first year of a required six-year study to measure the environmental and social impacts of Belo Monte and to determine if indigenous and fishing communities can continue to live downriver from the dam. There isn’t any published research yet because it is an ongoing study.

Lives Forever Changed

At the November ribeirinho meeting in Altamira, the scientific advocacy organization SBPC gave a 400-page report they produced on the dam’s social impact to the public prosecutor. Based on three months of field research, it claims that Norte Energia has effectively ended the ribeirinhos’ way of life and means of subsistence.

The report states: “With the forced displacement of the ribeirinho communities, they lost their territory, access to the natural environment and resources that they relied on for their livelihood and income, which means that they were robbed of the conditions that guaranteed their social and cultural reproduction … When they were displaced they began to buy practically all foodstuffs, living in a situation (of) food insecurity.”

The report also points out that the ribeirinhos were dealt a first blow when their homes were destroyed and then a second one with the chaotic implementation of its compensation scheme. The report called on the company to immediately change its course and implement a compensation scheme that follows the report’s guidelines.

A major issue stressed in the guidelines for the company to respect is the International Labor Organisation’s convention of “self-recognition” of traditional peoples, of which Brazil is a signatory.

Norte Energia was accused of using a “divide and conquer” strategy to move them out of their homes before they were flooded. They were dealt with individually and given “all or nothing” ultimatums before being resettled to neighborhoods on the outskirts of Altamira or onto inadequate alternative land, according to the study.

Others were moved onto their neighbors’ land, or next to mega-ranches, which could sow conflict in an region that is already beset with land-related violence and land theft. Land rights in Brazil’s interior have often been acquired through “grilhagem” – the falsification of land titles.

Meanwhile others that were displaced did not have the necessary documentation to receive any compensation at all.

The report also called on the company to provide the financial means for them to rebuild their homes in order to return to their way of life, while assuring they have access to essential public services.

“This council should have been formed years ago, even before Belo Monte was built,” said Thais Santi of the public prosecutor’s office in Altamira, who is providing legal assistance for the case. One of the first steps necessary to move things forward, Santi explained, is for IBAMA to recognize the council.

Background:

Fearnside, Philip M. (2017). Brazil’s Belo Monte Dam: Lessons of an Amazonian resource struggle. Die Erde. Geographical Society of Berlin.

International Energy Outlook 2016. U.S. Energy Information Administration.

End of Belo Monte works highlights unemployment in southwestern Pará, Amazônia, June 30, 2016

Belo Monte becomes reality, but chaos in the city of the plant is forever, Folha de S.Paulo, March 20, 2016

Juruna block Transamazon to collect projects for Belo Monte, Amazônia, June 30, 2016

Documentary shows impacts of Belo Monte Hydroelectric plant for local population, Agência Brasil, October 10, 2016

Murder of Brazil official marks new low in war on Amazon environmentalists, The Guardian, October 24, 2016

This article appeared originally in Mongabay – https://news.mongabay.com

Federal judge Ronaldo Desterro said environmental requirements to build the Belo Monte dam had not been met. He also barred the national development bank, BNDES, from funding the project.

The dam is a cornerstone of President Dilma Rousseff’s plans to upgrade Brazil’s energy infrastructure. But it has faced protests and challenges from environmentalists and local indigenous groups who say it will harm the world’s largest tropical rainforest and displace tens of thousands of people.

Judge Desterro said the Brazilian environmental agency, Ibama, had approved the project without ensuring that 29 environmental conditions had been met. In particular, he said concerns that the dam would disrupt the flow of the Xingu river – one of the Amazon’s main tributaries – had not been met.

His ruling is the latest stage in a long legal battle over Belo Monte. Previous injunctions blocking construction have been overturned.

The government says the Belo Monte dam is crucial for development and will create jobs, as well as provide electricity to 23 million homes.

The 11,000-megawatt dam would be the biggest in the world after the Three Gorges in China and Itaipu, which is jointly run by Brazil and Paraguay.

It has long been a source of controversy, with bidding halted three times before the state-owned Companhia Hidro Elétrica do São Francisco was awarded the contract last year.

Celebrities such as the singer Sting and film director James Cameron have joined environmentalists in their campaign against the project.

They say the 6km dam will threaten the survival of a number of indigenous groups and could make some 50,000 people homeless, as 500 sq km of land would be flooded.

Mercopress

To be built in the jungle state of Pará, the Belo Monte dam on the Xingu River will be the third largest in the world with a capacity of 11,000 megawatts, as Brazil seeks to meet rising demand for electricity from its expanding economy.

Environmentalists argue that the dam will upset the region’s delicate ecosystem, while local indigenous groups fear its construction will draw thousands of outsiders seeking work to one of Brazil’s remotest regions.

Erwin Krautler, the Catholic bishop of Xingu and head of the church’s Indian missionary council, says going ahead with the dam would have “unforeseeable consequences” among the region’s indigenous people. “These people will cry, they will shout, they will rise up,” he warned.

In 2008, local Indians attacked an engineer from Brazil’s state electricity company after he gave a lecture to them on the proposed dam, ripping off his shirt before cutting him with machetes.

Brazil’s environment minister Carlos Minc, announcing approval of the US$ 16.8 billion dam, admitted there was deep hostility to such projects, telling reporters: “Every hydroelectric plant is a war. The government wants them all approved and environmentalists want none.”

But he said Belo Monte would help Brazil in its quest to reduce carbon emissions. Latin America’s largest economy gets almost four-fifths of its electricity from hydroelectric plants.

The minister also said the original plan for a string of four dams flooding an area of 1,500 sq km had been scaled back on environmental grounds: “This would have made life in the region unviable. Now it will be one dam flooding 500 sq km.”

He insisted no indigenous peoples living on reservations would be among the estimated 12,000 people who will have to move because of the artificial lake the dam will create.

Mercopress

In recent weeks, the Brazilian government has turned to the difficult task of
building giant hydroelectric dams in the Amazon River. The project presents
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva with a major contradiction – between his
ambitious economic development plan based on large-scale infrastructure, and the
enormous social and environmental costs of the dams.

On the one hand, dam construction plays a critical role in the government’s large-scale infrastructure initiative called the Program to Accelerate Growth (PAC). The PAC is a multi-year public works program designed to advance economic development by promoting incentives for infrastructure expansion, including building large dams in the Amazon.

On the other hand, the president from the Workers Party must confront the reality that the megaprojects in the Amazon could cause enormous and irreversible environmental and social impacts, and that they face considerable obstacles under Brazil’s demanding environmental laws. President Lula now faces a major dilemma and so far has responded with frustration and cynicism.

The hot-button issue is the plan to build two large dams at the Santo Antônio and Jirau rapids on the Madeira River in the Amazonian state of Rondônia. The projects would dam the Amazon’s principal tributary, causing dramatic changes to the riverine ecology and affecting thousands of families who depend on the river for income, nutrition, and agriculture. With a combined generating capacity of 6,450 MW, government energy planners insist the Madeira dams are essential to avoiding blackouts in the next decade.

Yet following more than two years of analysis, Brazil’s environmental agency, IBAMA, recently issued a finding that it cannot give the go-ahead for the controversial project, citing insufficient information with which to make a decision.

IBAMA ordered the project proponents – Furnas, a state electric company, and Odebrecht, a Brazilian construction giant – to submit a series of complementary studies to determine whether the project is “environmentally feasible,” the criteria used under Brazilian law.

The companies have now responded, and reportedly Lula has ordered IBAMA to conditionally approve the project, pending actions which supposedly could “mitigate” some of the project’s most serious impacts.

IBAMA’s decision comes at a time when the Environment Ministry, under the command of internationally renowned environmental advocate and former rubber tapper leader, Marina Silva, is becoming increasingly marginalized within the Lula government. The center-right and conservative political parties that participate in the governing coalition have gained strength and consistently oppose tighter environmental regulation.

Still, Lula refused to fire Silva in his latest ministerial shake-up, an indication that her value as a symbol of the administration’s commitment to environmental protection is greater than the discomfort caused by her insistence on maintaining environmental protection standards for the big-ticket projects Lula insists are needed to spur the country’s economic growth.

The Brazilian electric sector has launched a torrent of criticism against the environment minister, claiming that IBAMA is holding up Brazil’s development. Silva has held steadfast in affirming that “there is no timetable for approving the Madeira project.”

This has led the General Director of Brazil’s Electrical Energy Agency, Jerson Kelman, to propose moving decision-making power for “strategic projects” (read, large dams in the Amazon and nuclear plants) out of the hands of IBAMA and placing it within the jurisdiction of the National Defense Council, an advisory body with participation of the military, among other government sectors.

Minister Silva did yield to pressure by announcing the restructuring of IBAMA, splitting the agency into two separate bodies, one entirely devoted to environmental licensing, and the other to administering protected areas, even though it is difficult to see how this will substantively break the deepening impasse. Facing impending cuts in budget and staff, IBAMA employees have gone out on strike, forcing the agency to hire consultants to complete the Madeira project’s licensing.

A bill currently in the federal parliament would overturn constitutional human rights guarantees for indigenous peoples facing plans for hydroelectric dams on their lands, instead obliging them to accept royalties. Brazil’s constitution holds that indigenous peoples “be heard” regarding plans for dams affecting their territories, a provision which courts have interpreted as requiring their informed consent.

The Madeira dam projects are indicative of the rough waters the government will have to navigate if it continues with plans to construct more than 60 large dams on the major rivers of Amazônia in the coming decades. The tendency has been to treat these projects as “a done deal.”

In the words of Brazilian energy specialist Sérgio Bajay of the University of Campinas, the electric sector wields “an iron hand.” The government and companies deny that the project will have far-reaching impacts. An Odebrecht executive told a public hearing in Rondônia last May that “this is a different kind of dam project – it has nearly no impact on the environment.”

Yet, independent studies commissioned by the state Public Attorney’s office in Rondônia and by IBAMA confirm what environmentalists and social movements have feared – that the Madeira project would cause enormous impacts. These would be felt over thousands of kilometers, from the mouth of the mighty Amazon and up the Madeira into neighboring Bolivia and Peru.

A principal factor is the Madeira’s extremely high sediment load – the river carries millions of tons of clay, sand, and silt from the Andean slopes where it is born to the Amazon River, where it accounts for half of all the sediments along the lower Amazon. Studies have shown that when the dams begin operation, the upstream Jirau reservoir would fill up with sediments, extending the flooded area into rainforests in neighboring Bolivia.

The retention of these sediments behind the walls of the dams would also rob downstream floodplains of the precious nutrients that fertilize agricultural lands and help sustain the Madeira’s incredible biodiversity – there are 750 fish species and 800 bird species along the ecological corridor of the Madeira.

Government pressure on IBAMA to liberate the license for the project has received a boost from a study by a World Bank-funded hydrological consultant, who said that all the sediments would pass through the turbines, eliminating any impacts they would otherwise cause.

International Implications

Another serious impact identified is the dams’ potential effects on migratory fish species. Some swim more than 3,000 kilometers each year to the Madeira’s upstream tributaries to spawn. Scientists suspect that the homing instinct of these fish would continue to attract them to the Madeira, and that with access to their reproductive areas being blocked by the dams, several important species could become extinct.

These species serve as a principal protein source for tens of thousands of riverbank dwellers along the Madeira and Amazon, and also have considerable economic value, both for artisanal fisherfolk and industrial fisheries. This finding led Lula to comment cynically that “environmentalists are trying to dump some catfish on my lap” by opposing the Madeira project.

The project’s effects on Bolivia could eventually block the project from moving ahead. Brazilian government officials (other than IBAMA) have tried to ignore the fact that for Brazil to build a dam that floods the territory of a neighboring country would require negotiating a complex set of treaties, in the absence of which Brazil would be guilty of violating international law.

Evo Morales told Lula at a meeting in January that his government was concerned about the Madeira project’s impacts. Lula responded by offering to finance a binational dam upstream, between Brazil and Bolivia, which has been planned within the framework of the South American Initiative for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure (IIRSA). Morales reportedly declined the offer.

Bolivia’s Environment Directorate has been analyzing the technical studies for the project, and its recommendations are now being discussed by the Morales government, which is expected to take a definitive position regarding the project in the next few weeks.

With the Bolivian government skirmishing with Brazil over the nationalization of Petrobras’ interests in the country, Morales’ decision on whether or not to oppose the Madeira dams could be tempered by other geopolitical and economic considerations.

Questions of Economic Viability

In addition to serious questions regarding the project’s environmental feasibility, Brazil may have trouble attracting sufficient private investment in the project due to questions about its economic viability.

Originally proposed as a source of cheap energy for the national grid, the project’s budget continues to grow. The latest estimate by the Brazilian Electrical Agency, Agência Nacional de Energia Elétrica (ANEEL), sets the cost for the Santo Antônio and Jirau dams at US$ 13.2 billion, not including the additional cost – estimated by the government at up to US$ 7.5 billion – of constructing 2,400 km of transmission lines to connect with the central electricity grid.

It also doesn’t include the costs of navigation locks, and the costs of building upstream dams to flood a series of rapids, making it possible for barges to travel from the mouth of the Amazon to the upper stretches of the Madeira’s tributaries. Brazil’s National Economic and Social Development Bank, BNDES, has offered generous financial terms as part of the PAC program, and the Brazilian government has discussed financing with the Inter-American Development Bank and World Bank.

But indications are that most private investors are carefully analyzing the dams’ economics, as well as its potential environmental problems, before embracing the project. Cláudio Sales, coordinator of an association of Brazilian electrical utilities, the Instituto Acende Brasil, said “we know that Pharaonic projects like this, run by state companies, always exceed their initial costs and timeframes.”

Also as part of PAC, the Brazilian government is attempting to license another dam at Belo Monte, with a planned generating capacity of 11,182 MW. This would be the first of a series of dams planned for the Xingu River, another Amazon tributary. The dam would displace at least 16,000 people, and would directly affect 450 indigenous people.

Environmental studies have so far been blocked from being carried out by a lawsuit filed by federal attorneys, on the grounds that IBAMA has not yet established terms of reference for the studies. Indigenous populations from throughout the Xingu basin met recently to voice their opposition to this project.

The Mines and Energy Ministry has already announced that another huge dam, São Luís, on the Tapajós River, with a capacity of more than 9,000 MW, will be the next giant project the government plans to promote. Other major Amazonian rivers, such as the Araguaia and Trombetas, are also slated for damming.

It is clear that the Lula government will continue to press for the licensing of the Madeira dams. IBAMA, which has had to continually defend its role in carefully analyzing the impacts of the projects, will surely find it impossible to resist the barrage of political criticism it is receiving. For this reason, the final decision on whether or not to go ahead with the Madeira complex will be made on political rather than technical grounds.

What is far less likely to take place will be an analysis of the alternatives to the Madeira complex, and the other mega-hydroelectric projects being planned for Amazônia. The Brazilian electric sector has angrily attacked anyone, including the conservation organization World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), who has dared to imply that energy efficiency or energy alternatives could well take up the slack if the country wished to avoid destroying the Amazon.

Studies by energy specialists showing that retrofitting older dams already in operation and cutting transmission losses could provide a significant quantity of new energy, at low cost and with nearly no environmental impacts, have been rejected as utopian and wishful thinking.

The economic interests of construction conglomerates that finance a major part of Brazil’s political campaigns, and the corruption that permeates the multi-billion dollar projects (Brazil’s Mines and Energy Minister recently was forced to quit when the Federal Police filmed the director of a construction company delivering an envelope with money to his cabinet) that the Lula government considers “strategic” for the country, speak more loudly than scientists and technical experts, and the voices of river bank communities along the Amazon are not heard in Brasilia.

The future of the Amazon may well depend on whether diplomatic and legal conflicts can hold Lula’s Pharaonic vision of Brazilian development in check, forcing energy planners to seek an alternative path.

For More Information:

“Rio Madeira Vivo” 7-minute video on Madeira dams
English: www.youtube.com/?v=jDLFWVmzQnI
In Portuguese: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw2J5U7YbIg

Furnas webpage on Madeira Project
http://www.furnas.com.br/negocios_novos_projetos_07.asp

IIRSA webpage on Madeira and related projects
English:
http://www.iirsa.org/BancoConocimiento/E/eje_peru_brasil_bolivia_grupo_3/eje_peru_brasil_bolivia_grupo_3_ENG.asp?CodIdioma=ENG
In Spanish:
http://www.iirsa.org/BancoConocimiento/E/eje_peru_brasil_bolivia_grupo_3/eje_peru_brasil_bolivia_grupo_3.asp?CodIdioma=ESP
In Portuguese:
http://www.iirsa.org/BancoConocimiento/E/eje_peru_brasil_bolivia_grupo_3/eje_peru_brasil_bolivia_grupo_3.asp?CodIdioma=POR

International Rivers Network Madeira River webpage
http://www.irn.org/programs/madeira/
In Portuguese: http://www.irn.org/programs/madeira/index.php?lang=po
In Spanish: http://www.irn.org/programs/madeira/index.php?lang=sp

Rio Madeira Vivo webpage by activists in Rondônia (in Portuguese)
www.riomadeiravivo.org/

Independent studies commissioned by Rondônia state attorney’s office
http://www.mp.ro.gov.br/web/guest/Interesse-Publico/Hidreletrica-Madeira

Amigos da Terra Amazônia Brasileira/IRN, “Trinta Falhas no EIA-RIMA do rio Madeira”
http://amazonia.org.br/guia/detalhes.cfm?id=226207&tipo=6&cat_id=39&subcat_id=1

IRN/FOE Amazônia Brasileira, “Studies that don’t hold water”
http://www.irn.org/programs/madeira/index.php?id=archive/DontHoldWater2007.html

Glenn Switkes is Director of International Rivers Network’s Latin America office, based in São Paulo and a contributor to the Americas Program – www.americaspolicy.org.

The group will focus first on the projected hydroelectric power plants of Santo Antônio and Jirau which are both located in the state of Rondônia on the Madeira River, one of the main tributaries of the Amazon River.

The two plants have a projected generating capacity of 6,450 MW, which is over half the generating capacity of the world’s biggest operating power plant, at Itaipu, on the border of Brazil and Paraguay, which generates 12,600 MW.

Itaipu will become the world’s second biggest power plant when the Three Gorges plant in China goes into operation.

According to the office of Brazil’s Presidential Chief of Staff, two of the other four projected power plants also need environmental licenses. They are Dardanelos in the state of Mato Grosso, and Mauá in the state of Paraná.

The two power plants that are ready to receive environmental licensing approval, according to the government, are both located in the state of Rio de Janeiro. They are Cambuci and Barra do Pomba.

Agência Brasil