Construction on Brazil's Belo Monte hydrolectric dam in the Amazon Basin began this week, starting with infrastructure work to provide roads in the region.
The $11.2 billion dam on the Amazon's Xingu River is slated to begin producing energy on Dec. 31, 2014. It could become the third-largest dam in the world.
The dam is needed to satiate the demand for energy that grew along with economic growth last year, says the Brazilian government. But indigenous and environmental groups say development with displace many thousands of residents and possibly trigger violence in the Amazon state of Pará.
"Belo Monte allows Brazil to achieve two objectives. First, it manages to meet the energy needs of the country, which will foster growth in development, while at the same time maintaining low levels of greenhouse gas emissions," said Mauricio Tolmasquim, the president of Brazil's Energy Research Co.
Earlier this month, Sheyla Juruna, a prominent indigenous activist from the region, traveled to London to stir awareness of the negative impacts of the project.
"We are here to show the international community that we are not being heard and that the Brazilian government is seriously violating our rights," she said. "The government speaks about sustainable development and human rights. How can this be true when they are forcing these projects of destruction on us?"
Last year, Hollywood film director James Cameron visited the dam. "If this goes forward, then every other hydroelectric project in the Amazon Basin gets a blank check," he said. "It's now a global issue. The Amazon rainforest is so big and so powerful ... that its destruction will affect everyone."
However, some locals welcome the 20,000 jobs the dam is expected bring to the local economy.
Tolmasquim said the dam's design stresses environmental sustainability and minimal impacts to the human and natural environment.
"No indigenous land surrounding the area of the project will be flooded. No indigenous community will be moved out of their land," he said. "This is a very different project from other major projects, such as the Three Gorges Dam project [in China], which was estimated to have relocated 1 million people."
But opponents continue to fight the development.
"The struggle to resist the Belo Monte Dam and protect the Xingu River is far from over," said Christian Poirier, the Brazil program coordinator for environmental group Amazon Watch. "Resistance on the ground will not waver" (Tom Phillips, London Guardian, Mar. 10). -- TS
