Belo Monte Dam Proposal
Source: International Rivers
Last session I mentioned recently learning of a huge dam, slated to be the third largest on earth, cleared to begin construction, but I could not remember which river or what country. It is the Belo Monte Dam on the Xingu River in the State of Pará in Brasil. It is almost exclusively a hydroelectric project and will attempt to capture some of the energy of the Xingu, one of the world's longer and larger rivers by rate of flow and the final huge tributary of the Amazon before it enters the Atlantic. As I noted "dictators love dams," and the original proposal for the Belo Monte Dam dates to the military dictatorship that misgoverned Brasil a generation ago. Like many bad ideas, however, the proposal did not die when the dictatorship ended.
One of over a hundred proposed hydroelectric dams in the Amazon basin of Brasil, when and if constructed, the Belo Monte Dam will flood a vast area of biologically diverse tropical rain forest and displace a large number of first nations people. Its proposed construction has generated a huge controversy. Various organizations within Brasil (a source from Brasil in English) and outside like the non-profit International Rivers have protested the construction and are likely to continue doing so even though the dam project appears to have cleared the final legal hurdle. It will be a vastly expensive project, and one of the expenses is a requirement that the winning bidders pay the equivalent of almost a billion US dollars to create national parks, ecological reserves, and homes for the 20-40,000 people who will be displaced by flooding when the reservoir is filled. The director James Cameron and members cast of the cartoon Avatar have been among the most vocal opponents of the dam outside Brasil, and they have produced a film narrated by the actress Sigourney Weaver to raise awareness of their protest.
A few days ago Brasil elected a new president, its first female head of government. It is unlikely but possible that Dilma Roussef will repudiate the policy of her predecessor and patron, the immensely popular current president Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva and halt construction now that courts have granted legal approval. We shall have to wait and see.
