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topic: Amazon Dams
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Gold rush moves closer to Amazon’s second-tallest tree
Illegal gold miners are now operating very close to the second-tallest tree in the Amazon Rainforest, Mongabay’s Fernanda Wenzel reported in April. Six giant trees, including a red angelim (Dinizia excelsa) that stands 85 meters (279 feet) tall, are found inside the Iratapuru River Sustainable Development Reserve in Brazil’s Amapá state. Despite the area’s protected status, […]
Hydropower dams threaten fishing communities on the Amazon
HUMAITÁ, Brazil — The Madeira Basin, the most biodiverse region in the Amazon River Basin, boasts 1,406 catalogued species. However, this ecological richness is under threat from human activities and the climate crisis. Hydropower plants on the Madeira River have disrupted the natural hydrological cycle, leading to irregular water pulses that interfere with fish migratory patterns. […]
Mato Grosso shelves environmental license application for Amazon dam
- The Mato Grosso government has halted the licensing for the Castanheira hydropower plant, proposed for construction in the Juruena River Basin, which would flood a 95-km2 [37-square-mile] area and directly affect Indigenous and rural communities in northern Mato Grosso state.
- Social movements in the area see this as a victory in a struggle that lasted more than a decade.
- The fact that the project was shelved does not mean it has been put to rest; Brazil’s Ministry of Mines and Energy may still resubmit plans for the construction of the dam.
Ancient giant river dolphin species found in the Peruvian Amazon
- Paleontologists discovered a fossilized skull of a newly described species of giant freshwater dolphin in the Peruvian Amazon, which lived around 16 million years ago and is considered the largest-known river dolphin ever found.
- The ancient creature, measuring 3-3.5 meters (9.8-11.5 feet), was surprisingly related to South Asian river dolphins rather than the local, living Amazon river pink dolphin and shared highly developed facial crests used for echolocation.
- The discovery comes at a time when the six existing species of modern river dolphins face unprecedented threats, with their combined populations decreasing by 73% since the 1980s due to unsustainable fishing practices, climate change, pollution, illegal mining and infrastructure development.
- Conservation efforts are underway, including the signing of the Global Declaration for River Dolphins by nine countries and successful initiatives in China and Indonesia, highlighting the importance of protecting these critical species that serve as indicators of river ecosystem health.
Brazil’s 2024-2027 “Transversal Environmental Agenda”: The elephants in the room (commentary)
- Brazil’s current 4-year development plan is accompanied by a “Transversal Environmental Agenda,” released last week, to coordinate environmental measures across the different federal agencies.
- While the agenda lists many worthwhile items in the portfolios of the various ministries, it fails in the most basic role such an agenda should play: ensuring that government actions do not cause environmental catastrophes.
- Missing subjects include foregoing building roads that open Amazon forest to deforestation, legalizing illegal land claims that stimulates an unending cycle of land grabbing and invasion, plans for hydroelectric dams in Amazonia, expanding oil and gas drilling and the burning of fossil fuels that must end without delay if global warming is to be controlled.
- An earlier version of this text was published in Portuguese by Amazônia Real. It is a commentary and does not necessarily reflect the views of Mongabay.
Latest planned Amazon dam project threatens Indigenous lands, endemic species
- A study led by an Indigenous organization has found inconsistencies in the planning and licensing processes of the Castanheira hydroelectric project that it warns could alter the course of the Arinos River, one of the last still flowing freely in the Juruena River Basin.
- An area the size of 9,500 soccer fields would be flooded for the dam’s reservoir, affecting a region that’s home to Indigenous territories, small and medium-sized family farms, and the ancestral territory of the Tapayuna Indigenous people.
- The federal government has still not released a statement defining a timeline for the dam’s construction, even though feasibility studies began in 2010; the project is currently awaiting its environmental licensing.
What Brazil should have said at COP28 but didn’t (commentary)
- Brazil’s President Lula made important contributions to COP28 in demanding that the 1.5°C temperature increase limit be respected, in recognizing the risk of Amazon forest collapse, and in promising to end Brazil’s Amazon deforestation by 2030.
- Lula failed to explain how zero deforestation would be achieved, implicitly relying only on the Ministry of Environment’s command and control operations against illegal clearing. The causes of deforestation must be addressed, many of which are being strengthened by the rest of Lula’s presidential administration.
- These include legalization of illegal land claims in government land and highway projects such as BR-319 and associated side roads that would open vast areas of Amazon forest to the entry of deforesters. Brazil’s plans for opening new oil and gas extraction areas and expanding existing ones contradict the discourse on limiting temperature rise to 1.5°C.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
AI unlocks secrets of Amazon river dolphins’ behavior, no tagging required
- Freshwater dolphins in the Amazon Basin navigate through flooded forests during the wet season using their flexible bodies and echolocation clicks.
- Researchers have combined advanced acoustic monitoring and AI to study the habits of endangered pink river dolphins (boto) and tucuxi in seasonally flooded habitats.
- They used hydrophones to record sounds in various habitats and employed convolutional neural networks (CNN) to classify the sounds as either echolocation clicks, boat engine noises, or rain — with high accuracy.
- Understanding the dolphins’ movements and behaviors can aid conservation efforts to protect these endangered species, as they face various threats such as fishing entanglement, dam construction, mining, agriculture and cattle ranching.
Fishing, dams and dredging close in on Peru’s river dolphins, study shows
- Amazon river dolphins in Peru are facing increasing threats from human activity, including fishing, proposed construction of dams, and dredging operations
- A study tracked the movements of dolphins in relation to fishing areas, dams and dredging sites, and found that 89% of their home range is subject to fishing activity.
- The research team observed that the dolphins in the study were, on average, located roughly 252 kilometers (157 miles) from the nearest proposed dam and 125 km (78 mi) from the closest proposed dredging site.
- The construction of the Amazon Waterway, aimed at improving navigability along waterways in Peru, involves dredging sites across four main rivers in the basin and could lead to ship collisions with dolphins, increased underwater noise, and habitat degradation.
Fishers confirm scientists’ warning: Brazil’s Belo Monte dam killed off the river
- Seven years after the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant went into operation, fishers confirm what scientists have been verifying in studies: the fish have disappeared from this stretch of the Xingu River.
- According to Brazil’s Public Prosecutor’s Office, the construction of the dam caused the direct deaths of more than 85,000 fish, equivalent to 30 metric tons, between 2015 and 2019.
- The loss of fish has reverberated up the food chain, with local fishing communities no longer able to make a living that generations before them took for granted.
Second chance for Lula as controversial Amazon dam goes up for renewal
- In the biological and cultural hotspot of the Volta Grande in Brazil’s Amazon, Indigenous communities and scientists have teamed up to monitor the impacts of the Belo Monte hydroelectric project, one of the biggest in the world.
- The dam complex has diverted 80% of the Xingu River’s water flow, significantly affecting the aquatic life in the Volta Grande river bend and pushing the entire ecosystem toward collapse, along with the local communities who rely on it.
- The complex’s environmental license, which lasts six years and dictates the amount of water flowing through Belo Monte, is currently up for review by the federal environmental protection agency, IBAMA.
- President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva played a key role in pushing for the construction of Belo Monte, and now, back in power, can influence a new path for the environment and local communities, activists say.
Dammed, now mined: Indigenous Brazilians fight for the Xingu River’s future
- Canadian mining company Belo Sun wants to build a huge gold mine in the Big Bend of the Xingu River in the Brazilian Amazon, but faces opposition from Indigenous communities.
- In addition to the environmental impacts, experts warn of the risk of the proposed tailings dam rupturing, which could flood the area with 9 million cubic meters (2.4 billion gallons) of toxic waste.
- The same region is already suffering the impacts of the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam, which diverts up to 85% of the flow of the Xingu River, leading to a mass decline in fish that traditional riverside dwellers and Indigenous people rely on.
- The Belo Sun project was legally challenged last year, prompting supporters to harass and intimidate those who oppose the mine’s construction; tensions in the region remain high.
Series of small dams pose big cumulative risk to Amazon’s fish and people
- Small hydropower plants and small-scale fish farming in the Brazilian Amazon basin are often thought to cause negligible environmental harm, yet a new study reveals their cumulative damage is greatly underestimated and can be more impactful than large dams.
- Dwindling fish populations caused by the construction of thousands of small dams has impacted the livelihoods of millions of Indigenous and riverside people who depend on fishing for food, income and culture.
- Small hydropower plants and aquaculture farming are encouraged through economic incentives, simple licensing procedures, and loose requirements for environmental impact assessments before construction.
- More than 350 dam proposals in the Amazon basin are under consideration and 98 medium-sized dams will be prioritized in Brazil as of next year, ensuring the construction of hydropower plants will continue.
Crimes against the Amazon reverberate across Brazil, analysis shows
- Crimes associated with illegal logging, mining and other illicit activities in the Brazilian Amazon are being felt in 24 of Brazil’s 27 states, a new report shows.
- Records of more than 300 Federal Police operations between 2016 and 2021 show that crimes such as tax evasion, money laundering, corruption and wildlife trafficking are reverberating far beyond the rainforest.
- Deforestation is at the center of the criminal economy in the Amazon, driving four main illegal activities: logging, mining, occupation of public lands, and environmental violations associated with agriculture.
- Nearly half of the police operations investigated crimes that occurred in protected areas in the Amazon, including 37 Indigenous territories.
A new index measures the human impacts on Amazon waters
- Based on the best scientific data available, the unprecedented Amazon Water Impact Index draws together monitoring and research data to identify the most vulnerable areas of the Brazilian Amazon.
- According to the index, 20% of the 11,216 Brazilian Amazon micro basins have an impact considered high, very high or extreme; half of these watersheds are affected by hydroelectric plants.
- The same index points out that 323 of the 385 Indigenous Lands in the Brazilian Amazon face a medium to low impact, which demonstrates the fundamental role of these areas in protecting the aquatic ecosystems of the Amazon.
- The Amazon River Basin covers 7 million square kilometers (2.7 million square miles) and contains 20% of all freshwater on the Earth’s surface; still, little is known about the impacts of increased human activity on aquatic ecosystems.
The world’s dams: Doing major harm but a manageable problem?
- Dam construction is one of the oldest, most preferred tools to manage freshwater for various uses. The practice reached a peak internationally in the 1960s and ’70s, but in recent years dam construction has faced increasing global criticism as the hefty environmental price paid for their benefits piles up.
- The flows of most major waterways have been impacted by dams globally. Only 37% of rivers longer than 1,000 km (620 mi) remain free-flowing, and just 23% flow uninterrupted to the sea. Natural flows will be altered for 93% of river volume worldwide by 2030, if all planned and ongoing hydropower construction goes ahead.
- This global fragmentation of rivers has led to severe impacts. Dams have contributed to an 84% average decline in freshwater wildlife population sizes since 1970. More than a quarter of Earth’s land-to-ocean sediment flux is trapped behind dams. Dams also impact Earth’s climate in complex ways via modification of the carbon cycle.
- But dams are needed for energy, agriculture and drinking water, and are an inevitable part of our future. Lessons on how to balance their benefits against the environmental harm they do are already available to us: removing some existing dams, for example, and not building others.
Dams on Brazil’s Jamanxim River: The advancing assault on the environment and Indigenous peoples in the Tapajós basin (commentary)
- Brazil’s electrical authorities have given the go-ahead for studies to prepare for building three large Amazonian dams that would flood Indigenous lands and protected areas for biodiversity.
- The decision shows that Brazil’s presidential administration is confident that the National Congress will approve the bill submitted by President Bolsonaro to open Indigenous lands to hydroelectric dams, and probably also allow dams to continue to be built without consulting impacted Indigenous peoples.
- The decision also shows that Brazil’s electrical authorities continue to ignore inconvenient information on climate change, the financial viability of Amazonian dams and their many social and environmental impacts, as well as the country’s better energy options.
- This text is translated and expanded from the author’s column on the Amazônia Real website. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
AI model shows how Amazon dams can be made less environmentally damaging
- Researchers have developed a model using artificial intelligence to analyze the environmental impacts of 351 hydropower dam projects currently under evaluation in the Amazon Basin.
- The model aims to provide information that would help planners and policymakers optimize the capacity and location of new dams to minimize their negative impacts.
- It also shows, however, that no proposed dam could ever have zero impact across all the environmental criteria, and that social impacts on local communities remain far too complex to model with AI.
- While other researchers have welcomed the new way of modeling the risks, they recommend an end to high-capacity hydropower projects in the Amazon and a greater focus on solar and wind power instead.
New transport infrastructure is opening the Amazon to global commerce
- Tim Killeen provides an update on the state of the Amazon in his new book “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon Wilderness – Success and Failure in the Fight to save an Ecosystem of Critical Importance to the Planet.”
- The book provides an overview of the topics most relevant to the conservation of the Amazon’s biodiversity, ecosystem services and Indigenous cultures, as well as a description of the conventional and sustainable development models vying for space within the regional economy.
- Mongabay will publish excerpts from the Killeen’s book, which will be released by The White Horse Press in serial format over the course of the next year. In this second installment, we provide a section from Chapter Two: “Global Competition Drives Bulk Transport Systems”.
- This post is an except from a book. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Amazon dams: No clean water, fish dying, then the pandemic came
- Villagers living near the Teles Pires and São Manoel dams in Brazil’s Mato Grosso state — including the Apiaká, Kayabí and Munduruku peoples — attest to poor water quality, lack of potable water, increased malaria and rashes since the dams were built on their river. They also say there has been little response from the dam companies.
- Indigenous peoples say the Brazilian hydroelectric projects have altered river ecology along with thousands of years of cultural practice, especially their fishing livelihood. Migratory fish and other game fish have been greatly diminished, so residents must now resort to fishing at night.
- Once the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in the region, lack of clean water for bathing became even more urgent, while disappearing fish in daily diets made it harder to get food or isolate in riverside villages. Only under judicial order did dam companies recently improve water supply infrastructure.
- Experts trace these adverse impacts back to the dams’ planning stages: with the construction companies skipping legally mandated steps, not consulting Indigenous peoples as required, and failing to calculate cumulative impacts of multiple dam projects. Villagers are now monitoring impacts — and some are studying the law.
Brazil’s Belo Monte Dam: Struggle for the Volta Grande enters a new phase (Commentary)
- A June 17th judicial decision suspends the permission granted on February 8th by Brazil’s environmental agency to allow even more water to be diverted from the Xingu River.
- Even without the additional diversion of water, the 130-km “Volta Grande” stretch receives insufficient water for its unique ecosystems and for its indigenous and traditional river-dwelling inhabitants.
- The new decision is at high risk of being overturned by means of Brazil’s “security suspension” laws that allow any ruling that would “damage” the economy to be reversed.
- The new decision could also be neutralized by the Bolsonaro government after technical studies are completed in December. It could also be overridden by a new interministerial group that is about to be decreed. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Amazon’s Belo Monte dam cuts Xingu River flow 85%; a crime, Indigenous say
- In February, IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental agency permitted Belo Monte mega-dam operator Norte Energia to drastically reduce flows to the Volta Grande (Big Bend) of the Xingu River for at least a year. That decision reversed an earlier ruling to maintain much higher Xingu River flows and the fishery — as legally required.
- The flow reduction will leave 70% of usually-flooded forest dry this season, causing massive fish mortality and diminished reproduction, experts say. Community group Xingu Vivo Para Sempre denounced the decision as “a death sentence for the Xingu” and demanded IBAMA’s and Norte Energia’s presidents be “criminally prosecuted.”
- Norte Energia has funded projects to mitigate the reduced flow, collecting and dropping fruit into the river for fish to feed on, and releasing captive-bred fish. But scientists say these approaches are unscientific and will likely be ineffective, and can’t make up for the loss of the river’s seasonal flood pulse, upon which fish depend.
- Residents say the government has spread misinformation, telling Brazilian consumers that their electricity bills would go up if Belo Monte released more water to maintain the Xingu’s ecosystem — something Norte Energia is obligated to do. At present, water levels on the Volta Grande have not been restored.
Brazil’s Belo Monte Dam: Greenwashing contested (commentary)
- The company responsible for Brazil’s Belo Monte Dam claimed in a letter to the New York Times that the company respects Indigenous peoples, the environment and international conventions.
- The Arara Indigenous people contest the company’s claims and call attention to a series of broken promises.
- The Belo Monte Dam is notorious for having violated international conventions and Brazilian laws regarding consultation of Indigenous peoples, and for its massive environmental and social impacts.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Ribeirinhos win right to waterside Amazon homeland lost to Belo Monte dam
- Some 40,000 people — mostly peasant farmers, fisherfolk, traditional families (living from the collection of forest products), Indigenous people, and ribeirinhos — were evicted to make way for the Belo Monte dam, constructed between June 2011 and November 2019.
- The ribeirinhos (traditional riverine people) were not politically well organized at the time, and along with many others, were forced out of their traditional riverside homes and livelihoods. Most moved into urban housing developments away from the Xingu River, where they were forced to pay rent and acclimate themselves to urban life.
- But over the years the ribeirinhos gained political savvy. Negotiating with Norte Energia, the consortium that built and runs Belo Monte, they gained the right to establish a collectively owned Ribeirinho Territory beside the Belo Monte reservoir.
- Under the agreement, 315 families are each to be provided with 14 hectares (34 acres) for individual use. Added to that are areas for collective use and a forest reserve — a combined total of 20,341 hectares (50,263 acres). However, with the deal now seemingly sealed, Norte Energia has backpedaled, wanting to propose a different agreement.
Belo Monte dam’s water demands imperil Amazon communities, environment
- Norte Energia, the builder and operator of the controversial Belo Monte mega-dam is pushing for implementation of a much disputed “consensus hydrogram” — a plan to annually manipulate water releases into the Xingu River’s Volta Grande (Big Bend), with estimated peak April releases ranging from a mere 4,000 – 8,000 m3/s.
- Noting that April average historical river flows in the Volta Grande before the dam was built were 19,985 m3/s, analysts say this dearth of water flow will prevent and imperil annual fish reproduction. One Volta Grande expert estimates that, using the so-called consensus hydrogram plan, at least 80% of Volta Grande fish will die.
- Documents from IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental agency, which first came to light publicly on December 3, acknowledge “grave and irreparable impacts” from the Belo Monte dam, and signal an urgent need to revise Norte Energia’s planned consensus hydrogram.
- Two recent studies say fish are decreasing dramatically in diets within Belo Monte’s influence area, causing food insecurity. Norte Energia claims fish quantities sold locally remain the same, but their data may mask significantly increased fishing effort, and the need to fish more widely, beyond previous fishing areas.
Brazil’s Bem Querer dam: An impending Amazon disaster (commentary)
- Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has announced his administration’s priorities for Amazon dams, including the planned Bem Querer dam on the Rio Branco in the far-northern state of Roraima.
- Bem Querer is primarily intended to increase the energy supply to industries in locations outside of Amazonia, rather than for residents of Roraima.
- Probable environmental impacts include blocking fish migrations and flooding a riparian forest that possesses extraordinary bird diversity. Downstream flow alteration would impact protected areas, including two Ramsar wetland biodiversity sites. Riverside dwellers would also be impacted.
- Sediment flow blockage would impact fisheries and the unique Anavilhanas Archipelago, a spectacular Brazilian national park. These adverse impacts need to be fully evaluated before a decision to build is made. This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Brazil’s Amazon dam plans: Ominous warnings of future destruction (commentary)
- Brazil’s current 10-year Energy Expansion Plan calls for three more large dams in Amazonia by 2029, and Brazil’s 2050 National Energy Plan lists many more.
- Both plans contain ominous passages explaining that the list of dams could expand if “uncertainty” is resolved regarding current regulations protecting Indigenous peoples and protected areas for biodiversity.
- Brazil’s National Congress is considering bills to eliminate environmental licensing; a bill submitted by President Jair Bolsonaro would allow dams on Indigenous lands. Brazil’s dam-building plans to satisfy 2050 energy demand extend to neighboring Amazonian nations, including Peru and Bolivia.
- The 2050 plan essentially admits that dams on Indigenous lands and within other protected areas are not necessary because the electricity could be generated by offshore wind power. This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Why the health of the Amazon River matters to us all: An interview with Michael Goulding
- Like the rainforest which takes its name, the Amazon is the largest and most biodiverse river on the planet. The river and its tributaries are a critical thoroughfare for an area the size of the continental United States and function as a key source of food and livelihoods for millions of people. Yet despite its vastness and importance, the mighty Amazon is looking increasingly vulnerable due to human activities.
- Few people understand more about the Amazon’s ecology and the wider role it plays across the South American continent than Michael Goulding, an aquatic ecologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) who has worked in the region since the 1970s studying issues ranging from the impact of hydroelectric dams to the epic migration of goliath catfishes. Goulding has written and co-authored some of the most definitive books and papers on the river, its resident species, and its ecological function.
- In recognition of his lifetime of advancing conservation efforts in the Amazon, the Field Museum today honored Goulding with the Parker/Gentry Award. The Award — named after ornithologist Theodore A. Parker III and botanist Alwyn Gentry who were killed in a plane crash during an aerial survey of an Ecuadorian cloud forest in 1993 — is given each year to “an outstanding individual, team or organization in the field of conservation biology whose efforts have had a significant impact on preserving the world’s natural heritage and whose actions and approach can serve as a model to others.”
- In a September 2020 interview ahead of the prize ceremony, Goulding spoke with Mongabay about his research and the current state of the Amazon.
Mercury from gold mining contaminates Amazon communities’ staple fish
- The four species of fish most commonly consumed by Indigenous and riverine people in the Brazilian state of Amapá contain the highest concentrations of mercury.
- In some species, researchers found levels of mercury four times in excess of World Health Organization recommendations.
- The mercury comes from gold-mining activity, where it’s used to separate gold from ore before being burned off and washed into the rivers.
- The health impacts of mercury contamination are well-documented, and include damage to the central nervous system, potentially resulting in learning disabilities for children and tremors and difficulty walking for adults.
Infrastructure plans imperil Latin America’s forests: Analysis
- A recent analysis in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by social scientists, along with representatives of NGOs and funding organizations, warns of the danger to forests, communities and biodiversity as a result of planned infrastructure.
- The team writes that the planning process needs to be focused on projects that bring the most benefits to people and the environment.
- The authors advocate an approach that includes input from often-marginalized groups like Indigenous communities and looks to science to inform planning for large-scale projects.
Deforestation in the Amazon is drying up the rest of Brazil: Report
- The center-west, south and part of the southeast regions of Brazil have seen rainfall well below average in recent years.
- Agriculture is the first sector to feel the effects of the drought, with drastic losses in production. Water supply and power generation have also been impacted.
- Agribusiness suffers the consequences of drought but also causes it: Deforestation of the Amazon to clear land for livestock, farming and logging affects the rainfall regime in Brazil and other Latin American countries.
- “South America is drying up as a result of the combined effects of deforestation and climate change”, says scientist Antonio Donato Nobre.
More than 500 dams planned inside protected areas: Study
- More than 500 dams are either under construction or planned within protected areas over the next two decades, according to a new study.
- The study found that more than 1,200 large dams already exist within protected areas.
- The authors strongly encourage governments to avoid constructing dams in or near protected areas and instead to look toward renewable energies such as wind and solar.
- The researchers express concerns about ongoing rollbacks to environmental protections, especially amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Life as an Amazon activist: ‘I don’t want to be the next Dorothy Stang’
- Socio-environmental activists are an endangered species in the Brazilian Amazon, with regularly occurring assassination-style killings like those of activists Chico Mendes in 1988 and Sister Dorothy Stang in 2005 creating an ongoing climate of fear.
- According to human rights watchdog Global Witness, Brazil in 2017 was the world’s most dangerous country for environmental acivists: 57 out of 201 deaths worldwide occurred in Brazil. Intimidation and murder of activists continues into the present.
- Activist Juma Xipaya saw the village she grew up in fundamentally changed by the building of the Belo Monte mega-dam. When she later exposed corruption and incompetence she faced death threats and now lives perpetually on guard.
- In recent years, Xipaya has been repeatedly pursued by a white pickup driven by two armed thugs, but police fail to respond to her pleas for help. The men eventually made an attempt on her life — a close call that almost killed her and her children.
Traditional villages dread living in shadow of Amazon tailings dams
- Mineração Rio do Norte (MRN), the world’s fourth largest bauxite producer, encroached on riverine communities beside the Trombetas River in the Brazilian Amazon in the 1970s. Over the years, MRN became notorious for its contamination of local waters with bauxite mining waste, residents say.
- To resolve that problem, the company built 26 tailings dams. The largest of these waste-holding impoundments covers 110 hectares (270 acres). The entire system for managing mining waste encompasses 1,700 hectares (4,200 acres) and is located within a national protected area.
- Brazil has suffered two catastrophic mining tailings dam collapses since 2015, leaving Trombetas riverine community residents concerned about the 26 MRN dams.
- Brazil’s National Agency of Mining has rated one of MRN’s dams as “high risk.” Fourteen more, should they fail, possess “social, environmental, economic and mortality risk.” MRN says its dams are safe. Locals are also worried over possible water contamination and loss of traditional livelihoods
Brazil could dynamite Amazon dolphin, turtle habitat for industrial waterway
- Brazil plans to excavate and dredge many millions of cubic meters of material, including the ecologically sensitive Lourencão Rocks, to create an industrial shipping channel on the Tocantins River in the Amazon. This article includes rarely seen video images of some of the endemic and threatened fish living in the Tocantins River rapids.
- Citing cost considerations, São Paulo-based DTA Engenharia plans to dump more than 5.6 million cubic meters of sand inside the Tocantins riverbanks, where Amazonian turtles now lay their eggs. The endangered Araguaian river dolphin would also be impacted.
- In September 2019, IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental agency, identified dozens of mistakes in DTA Engenharia’s environmental impact studies, which failed to list a dozen endangered fish, ignored the specialized riverine rock environment, and didn’t study turtles in most affected areas.
- IBAMA ordered DTA to redo fish and turtle studies, with new studies conducted on local traditional fisherfolk’s fishing practices. Six fisherfolk village associations near the Lourencão Rocks (35 kilometers of which are due to be dynamited and dredged) warn that the fishery and the unique traditional culture it supports are in peril.
Massive erosion likely due to hydropower dam causes oil spill on Ecuador’s Coca River
- Almost two months ago, Mongabay reported on the disappearance of the San Rafael waterfall, the highest in Ecuador. Geologists and hydrologists at the time warned that a phenomenon known as “regressive erosion” could affect upstream infrastructure.
- On April 7, two oil pipelines broke due to landslides along the river, and there is growing concern over the high rate at which the erosion is occurring.
- Oil has reached the Napo River and contaminated the water for downstream populations. If containment operations fail, it could reach the Amazon River in Peru.
- One expert interviewed by Mongabay said she believes the waterfall’s collapse and subsequent heavy erosion event are linked to the Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric plant, which was built and financed by Chinese companies.
Amazon Tipping Point puts Brazil’s agribusiness, energy sector at risk: Top scientists
- Scientists are sounding the alarm: the Brazilian Amazon is dangerously close to, or may already be hitting, a disastrous rainforest-to-savanna tipping point, with heightened drought driven by regional and global climate change, rapidly rising deforestation and more numerous and intense wild fires.
- Overshooting the tipping point would not only be cataclysmic to Amazon biodiversity and release massive amounts of forest carbon destabilizing the planet’s climate further, it could also devastate Brazil’s economy by depriving agribusiness and hydroelectric energy production of water.
- Signs of deepening drought are already evident, as are serious repercussions. The $9.5 billion Belo Monte mega-dam for example, is already seeing greatly reduced seasonal flows in the Xingu River, a trend expected to worsen, potentially making the dam economically unviable, while also threatening the proposed Belo Sun goldmine.
- Reduced rainfall and a shorter growing season are also putting Brazilian agribusiness at risk. Even as scientists rush to develop heat and drought-resistant crops, many doubt new cultivars will keep pace with a changing climate. The Bolsonaro government is ignoring the economic threat posed by the tipping point
Past and future tropical dams devastating to fish the world over: Study
- Most research on the ecological impacts of tropical dams does so one dam project at a time. But a new landmark study attempts to connect the dots globally by analyzing tropical dam impacts on freshwater river fish around the world.
- The research assembled data on the geographic range of 10,000 fish species, and checked those tropical species against the location of 40,000 existing dams and 3,700 dams that are either being built or planned for the near future.
- Scientists found that biodiversity hotspots including the Amazon, Congo, Salween and Mekong watersheds are likely to be hard hit, with river fragmentation potentially averaging between 25% and 40% due to hydropower expansion underway in the tropics.
- Dams harm fish ecology via river fragmentation, species migration prevention, reservoir and downstream deoxygenation, seasonal flow disruption, and blockage of nurturing sediments. Drastic sudden fish losses due to dams can also destroy the commercial and subsistence livelihoods of indigenous and traditional peoples.
Making a thriller out of Belo Monte hydro dam: Q&A with filmmaker Sabrina McCormick
- The construction of the controversial Belo Monte hydroelectric dam in the Brazilian Amazon is the narrative engine that drives Sequestrada, the first full-length film by U.S. cinematographer and sociologist Sabrina McCormick.
- The film, which came out in December on various streaming platforms, tells the story of Kamudjara, an indigenous girl, amid the expectations about the profound social and environmental changes that the construction will bring.
- In this interview with Mongabay, the director speaks about her creative process, her experience filming in the Amazon and perceptions about the social and cultural aspects, as well as the indigenous people’s sense of belonging to the forest.
- A former climate and environmental adviser to the Obama administration, McCormick also stresses the importance of blocking the advance of power generation models based on projects like Belo Monte.
Database offers new details on the dams that hold mining waste
- A new database called the Global Tailings Portal pulls together information on 1,700 dams that store waste, or tailings, from mines around the world.
- Around 100 publicly traded companies have shared information about their dams with GRID-Arendal, the Norwegian foundation that developed the database.
- The portal’s creators say that much of the information, including the size, location, and risk factors associated with the included dams, hasn’t been publicly available before, even as catastrophic dam failures continue to occur.
Bolsonaro sends Congress bill to open indigenous lands to mining, fossil fuels
- President Jair Bolsonaro has long pledged to open Brazil’s indigenous reserves in the Amazon and elsewhere to commercial mining, oil and gas exploration, cattle ranching and agribusiness, new hydroelectric dam projects, and tourism. This week he sent a bill to Congress that would do just that.
- And while the legislation would allow consultation with impacted indigenous populations, they would lack the power of veto, except in cases of “garimpo” or wildcat mining. Though the bancada ruralista agribusiness lobby is strong in Congress, it remains to be seen whether the bill will be approved.
- The legislation would also allow the use of GM, genetically modified, seeds in agricultural projects, a practice previously banned because of the danger of contaminating native seeds. Royalties would be paid to indigenous communities for the economic activities allowed in their reserves and communities.
- Bolsonaro called his project a “dream” but it has already met with withering criticism from indigenous organizations who see it as a nightmare. Apib, the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples, called it a ‘death project’ which would, under the mask of false good intentions, effectively authorize the invasion of their lands
Use it, don’t lose it: Q&A with Amazon eco scientist Marcelino Guedes
- In an exclusive interview with Mongabay, Marcelino Guedes, a researcher at Brazil’s Amapá Federal University, talks about how important the management of traditional knowledge is for strengthening the forest economy in Brazil to overcome the paradigm that sees standing forest as an enemy of development.
- “Human practices can be managed to become the basis for conservation in Amazonia,” he says. Countering the idea that forests must be maintained in their virgin state, he says the rational use of a forest’s resources is the best way to create an effective conservation dynamic, considering the many pressures the region is undergoing.
- Guedes cites the Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis, which holds that small changes to the environment are crucial for increasing biodiversity. These disturbances can be natural, as in the case of a storm, or caused by humans, which is the case of the indigenous peoples of Amazonia, who have, over the last 5,000 years, been modifying and enriching the landscape through itinerant agriculture and dispersal of native species.
Catastrophic Amazon tipping point less than 30 years away: study
- The Amazon rainforest generates half its own rainfall, but deforestation threatens to disrupt this cycle, shifting large parts of this ancient forest to dry, savanna habitat. Passing such a “tipping point” would have disastrous knock-on effects for climate and weather patterns regionally and globally.
- A recent study modelling the impact of proposed roads, hydropower and mining developments in the Amazon basin suggests that 21-43 percent of the Amazon’s original extent will be lost by 2050, putting it close to, or beyond, the tipping point for a biome shift in large parts of the region.
- Although development is not currently proceeding at the rapid rate predicted under various ambitious government initiatives, experts say that, even with no new Amazon infrastructure, continued deforestation could drive the biome to the tipping point in the next 15–30 years.
- A quick transition to zero deforestation is the only way to avert catastrophic change to the Amazon, say experts. But conservationists fear the political will is lacking as the Bolsonaro administration continues to slash protections. Backing indigenous land stewards could offer a solution.
Amazon’s Munduruku stage daring Christmas raid to recover sacred urns
- In 2013, during the building of the Teles Pires dam in the Brazilian Amazon, the Teles Pires Hydroelectric Company (CHTP) dynamited Karobixexe (Seven Rapids), a sacred site of the Munduruku, Apiaká and Kayabi peoples. Located just outside an indigenous reserve, it received no government protection.
- Also during construction, the firm removed funeral urns from a sacred site without indigenous permission and refused to return them. In December, 70 Munduruku occupied the Natural History Museum in Alta Floresta in Mato Grosso state, and took back the 12 funeral urns, plus other artifacts of theirs.
- The construction of the Teles Pires dam and destruction of Karobixexe both occurred without prior consultation of the Mundurku as required under law according to the International Labor Organization’s Convention 169, of which Brazil is a signatory.
- Other human remains were found by CHTP and 270,000 artifacts were removed to which the Munduruku now have no access. They have also been barred from another sacred site, Dekoka’a (Monkey Hill) impacted by the construction of the São Manoel Hydroelectric Power Station, also located on the Teles Pires River.
Belo Monte boondoggle: Brazil’s biggest, costliest dam may be unviable
- The controversial Belo Monte mega-dam in Pará state has done significant socio environmental harm to the Xingu River and the indigenous and traditional people living beside it. Now it appears the dam may not be able to produce the electricity totals promised by its builders — an eventuality critics had long warned about.
- Project designers appear to have seriously misestimated the Xingu River’s flow rates and fluctuations between wet and dry seasons, while also not accounting for reductions in flow due to deforestation caused by rapidly expanding cattle ranches and soy plantations far upriver in Mato Grosso state.
- Climate change-induced droughts are also decreasing Xingu River flows and generating capacity. In 2013, an important Brazilian Panel on Climate Change report warned that global warming could drop water levels all across the Amazon basin, putting hydropower in serious jeopardy.
- As deforestation due to agribusiness and mining spreads across the basin, now driven by the development-friendly policies of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, the future for Amazon hydroelectric dams, their generating capacity and investment potential looks increasingly bleak.
Antonio Donato Nobre: “The forest is sick and losing its carbon-sequestration capacity”
- A researcher at the INPE Center of Land System Science, Antonio Donato Nobre, describes the state of degradation threatening the future of the Amazon rainforest in an exclusive interview with Mongabay.
- Nobre fears the forest is nearing what he describes as a “tipping point,” after which it will no longer be able to regenerate on its own, thus embarking on the path to desertification. “This is not about protecting the forest simply to please environmentalists. The living forest is essential for the survival of human civilization,” he says.
- In order to reverse the current state of destruction, Nobre proposes the development of a forest economy – capable, in his opinion, of generating nearly 20 times as much revenue as extensive cattle ranching. As an example, he cites the project Amazônia 4.0, which defends the use of technology for the sustainable exploration of biodiversity.
Brazil on the precipice: from environmental leader to despoiler (2010-2020)
- Brazil’s 21st century environmental record is most easily visualized via Amazon deforestation: poor regulation and lawlessness led to peak deforestation in 2004, with 27,772 square kilometers cleared. Better laws and enforcement, and a soy moratorium led to a dramatic decline to 4,571 square kilometers in 2012.
- Since then, first under Workers’ Party President Dilma Rousseff, then under Michel Temer, deforestation rates began to rise. The rate saw its biggest jump this year under President Jair Bolsonaro, with a loss of 9,762 square kilometers — the worst deforestation since 2008.
- From 2011-2016, the Amazon saw numerous hydroelectric project controversies, including the construction of the Belo Monte mega-dam, two huge hydroelectric projects on the Madeira River, plus multiple dams on the Teles Pires River. The Lava Jato corruption scandal and an economic downturn curbed dam building.
- Brazil’s ruralist agribusiness interests consolidated power, first under Temer, and more so under Bolsonaro, launching multiple attacks on indigenous and traditional land rights. Bolsonaro’s anti-environmental and anti-indigenous policies are a mark of his administration, a trend expected to continue in 2020.
Amazon’s giant South American river turtle holding its own, but risks abound
- The arrau, or giant South American River turtle (Podocnemis expansa), inhabits the Amazon and Orinoco rivers and their tributaries. A recent six nation survey assessed the health of populations across the region in Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru.
- The species numbered in the tens of millions in the 19th century. Much reduced today, P. expansa is doing fairly well in river systems with conservation programs (the Tapajós, Guaporés, Foz do Amazonas, and Purus) and not so well in others (the Javaés and Baixo Rio Branco, and the Trombetas, even though it has monitoring).
- The study registered more than 147,000 females protected or monitored by 89 conservation initiatives and programs between 2012 and 2014. Out of that total, two thirds were in Brazil (109,400), followed by Bolivia (30,000), Peru (4,100), Colombia (2,400), Venezuela (1,000) and Ecuador (6).
- The greatest historical threat to the arrau stems from eggs and meat being popular delicacies, which has led to trafficking. Hydroelectric dams and large-scale mining operations also put the animals at risk — this includes mining noise impairing turtle communication. Climate change could be the biggest threat in the 21st century.
‘Everything is dying’: Q&A with Brazilian indigenous leader Alessandra Munduruku
- Alessandra Munduruku recently spoke at the Global Climate Strike and presented the Munduruku Consultation Protocol to the European Parliament, tabling complaints about rights violations faced by indigenous peoples in Brazil.
- While in Berlin, the Brazilian indigenous leader told Mongabay about the on-the-ground impacts of agribusiness expansion and infrastructure development in the Amazon.
Brazilian state complicit in violence against forest defenders, report says
- A report by Human Rights Watch details 28 murders and 44 murder attempts or death threats since 2015 in the Brazilian Amazon, in which the victims were targeted for reporting illegal loggers.
- Impunity is the norm: very few cases make it to court, reports of intimidation are ignored by the authorities, the police make serious omissions in investigations, and the federal protection program for defenders is ineffective. The HRW report’s author says criminals “are empowered: they believe that they can do whatever they want.”
- Indigenous initiatives to monitor and patrol their territories have compensated for cuts in funding and human resources for public environmental agencies, but have placed these communities at greater risk of retaliation.
- Violence against defenders of the forest has been a recurring problem for many years, but it has increased under the Bolsonaro administration, which has sabotaged efforts to combat it, withdrawing from Brazil’s commitments assumed in the Paris Agreement to eliminate illegal logging in the Amazon by 2030.
Rivers are the world’s heritage. Time to treat them as such (commentary)
- This July represents a critical opportunity to protect rivers and the World Heritage sites that depend on them. Key government leaders will converge on Baku, Azerbaijan for the 43rd annual meeting of the World Heritage Committee this week.
- Established under the auspices of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Committee is charged with protecting sites around the world deemed of the highest cultural and natural values. But oddly, no river has yet been directly protected by the Committee.
- Beyond protecting existing sites from harm, the World Heritage Committee needs to broaden its conception of what constitutes a natural site to recognize the intrinsic value of rivers, particularly free-flowing rivers, and the critical role they play in sustaining life.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Amazon infrastructure puts 68% of indigenous lands / protected areas at risk: report
- 68 percent of the indigenous lands and protected natural areas in the nine nations encompassing the Amazon region are under pressure from roads, mining, dams, oil drilling, forest fires and deforestation, according to a new report by RAISG, the Amazonian Geo-referenced Socio-Environmental Information Network.
- Of the 6,345 indigenous territories located within the nine Amazonian countries surveyed, 2,042 (32 percent) are threatened or pressured by two types of infrastructure activities, while 2,584 (41 percent) are threatened or pressured by at least one. Only 8 percent of the total are not threatened or pressured at all.
- In the case of the 692 protected natural areas in the Amazon region, 193 (28 percent) suffer three kinds of threat or pressure, and 188 (27 percent) suffer threats or pressure from two activities.
- “These are alarming numbers: 43 percent of the protected natural areas and 19 percent of the indigenous lands are under three or more types of pressure or threat,” said Júlia Jacomini, a researcher with the ISA, Instituto Socioambiental, an NGO and RAISG partner.
Former Brazilian enviro ministers blast Bolsonaro environmental assaults
- A new manifesto by eight of Brazil’s past environment ministers has accused the rightist Bolsonaro administration of “a series of unprecedented actions that are destroying the capacity of the environment ministry to formulate and carry out public policies.”
- The ministers warn that Bolsonaro’s draconian environmental policies, including the weakening of environmental licensing, plus sweeping illegal deforestation amnesties, could cause great economic harm to Brazil, possibly endangering trade agreements with the European Union.
- Brazil this month threatened to overhaul rules used to select deforestation projects for the Amazon Fund, a pool of money provided to Brazil annually, mostly by Norway and Germany. Both nations deny being consulted about the rule change that could end many NGOs receiving grants from the fund.
- Environment Minister Riccardo Salles also announced a reassessment of every one of Brazil’s 334 conservation units. Some parks may be closed, including the Tamoios Ecological Station, where Bolsonaro was fined for illegal fishing in 2012 and which he’d like to turn into the “Brazilian Cancun.”
Amazon fish kill at Sinop spotlights risk from 80+ Tapajós basin dams
- Evidence shows that a 2019 fish kill in which 13 tons of dead fish were found in Brazil’s Teles Pires River was likely caused by anoxia (lack of oxygen) created by the filling of the Sinop dam’s reservoir by the Sinop HPP consortium (which includes French and Brazilian firms responsible for construction and operation).
- Scientists and environmentalists had warned of this and other ecological risks, but their calls for caution were ignored by regulators and resisted by the builder. Only 30 percent of vegetation was removed from the area of the reservoir, rather than the 100 percent required by law, which helped cause the die-off.
- The concern now is that similar incidents could occur elsewhere. There are at least 80 hydroelectric plants planned for the Juruena / Teles Pires basin alone — one of the Brazilian Amazon’s most important watersheds.
- Of immediate concern is the Castanheira dam on the Arinos River to be built by the federal Energy Research Company (EPE). Critics fear that, under the Jair Bolsonaro government, environmental licensing and construction will advance despite serious threats posed to indigenous reserves and the environment.
3 massacres in 12 days: Rural violence escalates in Brazilian Amazon
- The Amazon has seen 3 probable massacres in 12 days — likely a record for the region — as violence has exploded in areas of heavy deforestation where the building of large dams has brought a capital infusion, sent land prices soaring, and invited land speculation by land grabbers, loggers and ranchers.
- A Brazilian landless movement peasant leader and a leading dam activist are among those killed. The attacks have been concentrated in areas centered around the Belo Monte mega-dam; in the Madeira basin near the Jirau dam; and near the Tucuruí dam on the Tocantins River in Pará state.
- Investigations are ongoing, but early reports are that at least 9 people are dead, with some witnesses saying more have been killed, especially rural landless peasant workers. Before becoming president, Jair Bolsonaro expressed strong hostility against the landless peasant movement (Movimento dos Sem Terra, or MST).
- The Bolsonaro Administration has yet to condemn or comment significantly on the recent wave of killings. As of this article’s publication, the international community has taken little notice of the spike in violence.
Indigenous groups in Ecuador convene to talk resistance in the Amazon
- The meeting was the first time the three groups met in their own territory.
- The assembly was called in response to an announcement by Ecuador’s Minister of Energy and Non-renewable Resources in 2018, who said Blocks 86 and 87 in Ecuador’s eastern Amazon are for sale and “there will be no problems because the communities are in other blocks.”
- In response, the three nations, whose territories overlap with Blocks 86 and 87, are demanding the free, prior and informed consent process and a stop to all oil, mining and hydroelectric projects in the Amazon.
Leading Amazon dam rights activist, spouse and friend murdered in Brazil
- Dilma Ferreira Silva, long time regional coordinator of the Movement of People Affected by Dams (MAB) in the Tucuruí region of Pará state, was brutally murdered last Friday at her home, along with her husband, Claudionor Costa da Silva, and Hilton Lopes, a friend.
- Silva was one of 32,000 people displaced during the construction of the Tucuruí mega-dam. The internationally recognized activist has in recent years been pushing the Brazilian government to adopt legislation establishing the rights of those displaced by dams, providing them with compensation; the government has so far done little to create such laws.
- The killers of public officials, environmentalists, landless movement and indigenous activists in the Amazon are rarely found or brought to justice. However, in this case, Civil Police have arrested a large landowner, farmer and businessman, Fernando Ferreira Rosa Filho, known as Fernando Shalom.
- While the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and deputies in the Brazilian Congress, have condemned the killing of dam activist Silva, her husband and friend, the Bolsonaro administration has failed to issue a statement of any kind.
Madeira River dams may spell doom for Amazon’s marathon catfish: Studies
- Independent monitoring of a giant Amazon catfish population in the Madeira River, a major tributary of the Amazon, confirms that two hydroelectric dams have virtually blocked the species’ homing migration upstream — the longest known freshwater fish migration in the world.
- Research completed in 2018 indicates a serious decline in catches of the gilded catfish (Brachyplatystoma rousseauxii) and other key commercial species on the Madeira, both upstream and downstream of the two dams.
- New monitoring techniques show that the disruption of the migration route raises the risk of extinction for this species, for which researchers have recommended the conservation status be elevated from vulnerable to critically endangered.
- If the gilded catfish and other migratory species are to survive, mechanisms to assist their migration past the dams must be improved, researchers say.
New maps show where humans are pushing species closer to extinction
- A new study maps out how disruptive human changes to the environment affect the individual ranges of more than 5,400 mammal, bird and amphibian species around the world.
- Almost a quarter of the species are threatened by human impacts in more than 90 percent of their range, and at least one human impact occurred in an average of 38 percent of the range of a given species.
- The study also identified “cool” spots, where concentrations of species aren’t negatively impacted by humans.
- The researchers say these “refugia” are good targets for conservation efforts.
The hidden costs of hydro: We need to reconsider world’s dam plans
- As thousands of hydroelectric dams are planned worldwide, including 147 in the Amazon, a new study finds that the true socio-environmental and cultural costs of dams are rarely evaluated before construction. Were such factors counted into the lifetime cost of the dams, many would not be built.
- Dam repairs and removal at the end of a project’s life are rarely figured into upfront costs. Nor are impacts on river flow reduction, loss of fisheries, and aquatic habitat connectivity, destruction of productive farmlands drowned by reservoirs, and the displacement of riverine peoples.
- Lack of transparency and corruption between government and dam construction companies is at the heart of the problem preventing change. Researchers recommend that environmental impact assessments (EIAs) and social impact assessments (SIAs) be granted enough weight so that if they turn out negatively it will prevent a bad dam from being built.
- EIAs and SIAs should be done by third parties serving citizens, not the dam company. Better governance surrounding dams needs to be organized and implemented. There needs to be increased transparency about the true financial, social, cultural and environmental costs of dams to the public. Maintaining river flows and fish migrations is also critical.
Brazil’s Sinop Dam flouts environmental legislation (Commentary)
- The reservoir of Brazil’s Sinop Dam began filling in January 30, 2019, killing fish in the river below the dam. Oxygen levels in the water were minimal. Only 30 percent of the vegetation had been removed from the reservoir area, rather than the 100 percent required by law – a law that has been widely ignored.
- Permission to fill the reservoir was granted based on a consultant report commissioned by the power company with modeling results predicting good water quality in the portion of the reservoir from which water is released to the river.
- The fish dieoff at Sinop draws attention to the inadequacy of the licensing system, to the responsibility of paid consultants, and to the continuing efforts of Brazil’s judicial system to return the country to legality in the environmental area.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Financiers to discuss hydropower as climate-change mitigation, but dams are not ‘clean energy’ (commentary)
- Nature, the world’s highest-impact scientific journal, published a comment on February 20 by an advisor to the Climate Bonds initiative, who claimed that dams are good for the climate and should be given priority for subsidies when a group of 500 global financiers who participate in the initiative meets in London on March 5.
- The Nature comment is highly misleading, especially for dams in tropical areas where much of the future hydroelectric development is expected to occur. In addition to having a substantial impact on global warming during the narrow time window we have to contain climate change, virtually all planned dams would be built anyway for reasons unrelated to climate mitigation. Granting subsidies with “green” money drains funds away from alternatives with real climate benefits.
- Tropical dams have social and environmental impacts that dwarf those of other energy alternatives. Global financiers should better inform themselves about these impacts and the perverse effects of hydropower as climate-change mitigation.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Bolsonaro government takes aim at Vatican over Amazon meeting
- The Catholic Church has scheduled a Synod for October, a meeting at which bishops and priests (and one nun) from the nine Latin American Amazon countries will discuss environmental, indigenous and climate change issues.
- Members of the new rightist Brazilian government of Jair Bolsonaro are eyeing the event with suspicion, seeing it as an attack on national sovereignty by a progressive church.
- To show its opposition to the Amazon Synod, the Brazilian government plans to sponsor a rival symposium in Rome, just a month before the Pope’s meeting, to present examples of “Brazil’s concern and care for the Amazon.”
- At issue are two opposing viewpoints: the Catholic Church under Pope Francis sees itself and all nations as stewards of the Earth and of less privileged indigenous and traditional people. Bolsonaro, however, and many of his ruralist and evangelical allies see the Amazon as a resource to be used and developed freely by humans.
Good news from Mexico monarch reserve despite looming deforestation, mine threat
- On today’s episode, we talk with Mongabay contributor Martha Pskowski, who recently traveled to central Mexico to report on threats to monarch butterflies in their overwintering grounds.
- Tourists typically arrive in droves to see the butterflies at the reserves set up in their overwintering grounds, and right now is a particularly good time to see the butterflies, as Mexico’s national commissioner for protected natural areas has announced that, after years of declines, the number of monarchs spending their winter in Mexico is up 144 percent from last year.
- As Pskowski found on her recent reporting trip to two different monarch butterfly reserves in the Mexican states of Michoacán and the State of Mexico, the annual arrival of the monarchs is a major component of the local economy, but the butterflies still face a variety of threats to their survival once they reach their overwintering grounds.
New appointments, new policies don’t bode well for Brazilian Amazon
- Jair Bolsonaro took office on 1 January. Since then, he has made appointments to his government, and there have been statements by people in his administration, that are causing grave concern among environmentalists.
- New Environment Minister Ricardo Salles has come out strongly for an end to the demarcation of indigenous lands, and in support of entrepreneurs and companies being allowed to self-regulate the environmental licensing process for major infrastructure and development projects.
- Salles also wants to hire a satellite firm to monitor Brazil’s forest fires, drought and deforestation. Brazil’s National Space Research Institute (INPE), a governmental agency, released a response explaining that it is already doing this work. While Salles plan isn’t clear, it could be a means of privatizing deforestation monitoring.
- Franklimberg Ribeiro de Freitas has been chosen to head Funai, Brazil’s indigenous affairs agency. However, some fear a major conflict of interest. Freitas was most recently a consulting advisor for indigenous, community, and environmental affairs with the Belo Sun mining company, where he sided against indigenous land rights.
Bolsonaro government reveals plan to develop the ‘Unproductive Amazon’
- Bolsonaro administration Chief of Strategic Affairs Maynard Santa Rosa last week announced new Brazilian mega-infrastructure projects that include a dam on the Trombetas River, a bridge over the Amazon River, and an extension of the BR-163 highway from the Amazon River through 300 miles of rainforest to the Surinam border.
- Santa Rosa, a retired general, said that these Amazon biome infrastructure projects had as their purpose the integration of what he called an “unproductive, desertlike” region into “the national productive system.”
- The Trombetas region contains 4 indigenous reserves, 8 quilombo communities and 5 conservation units.
- In his radio announcement the official provided few details on the projects, saying nothing about costs, where the money to build would come from, what the socio-environmental impacts might be, or the timeline for the construction.
Latam Eco Review: Some whales may benefit from Japan’s whaling commission exit
More than 2,000 illegal mining sites in the Amazon, a wetland in Chile threatened by a highway extension, and a possible new monkey species in Peru were among the top stories from our Spanish-language service, Mongabay Latam. Interactive map shows more than 2,300 illegal mining sites across the Amazon A new interactive map shows 2,312 […]
Of concrete and corruption: Resistance kills Andes Amazon dams
- In 2010, the presidents of Peru and Brazil made a deal to build 22 major Andes Amazon dams on the Marañón River – the Amazon River’s mainstem. The energy generated by those dams would go to vastly expand Peru’s Conga gold and copper mine, making it one of the biggest in the world.
- The Conga mine expansion would have dumped 85,000 tons of toxic, heavy metal-laden tailings into the Ucayali River watershed daily. The Marañón dams would have blocked vital nutrient and sediment flow, likely doing irreparable harm to Amazon River and Amazon basin ecology.
- Odebrecht, a Brazilian mega-construction firm, was picked to spearhead building. The projects were strongly opposed by the rural people they’d impact, and by an international alliance of environmental NGOs and river adventure tourists who see the Marañón as Latin America’s Grand Canyon.
- Nine years later, the Peruvian and Brazilian presidents and Odebrecht executives involved in the deal are in jail or charged with corruption. All but two of the dam projects have been abandoned. The result came about largely due to the astonishingly successful resistance of local rural people.
Bolsonaro acts; Brazil’s socio-environmental groups resist
- The Bolsonaro administration is barely two weeks old, but the new president and his appointees continue to make incendiary statements and press forward with provisional measures and policies that could seriously infringe indigenous, quilombola and agrarian reform land rights, and environmental protections.
- Protest has been loud against the government’s plan to shift the responsibility for indigenous land demarcation away from FUNAI, the indigenous affairs agency, to the Agriculture Ministry, which is dominated by agribusiness and far right ruralists who have long desired indigenous lands. Another proposal may “rent” indigenous lands to ruralists.
- Amazon land thieves also have been emboldened since the election, with the invasion of the Arara Indigenous Reserve in southeast Pará state on 30 December, two days before Bolsonaro took office. On 11 January, land thieves invaded the Uru-eu-wau-wau reserve in Rondônia state. There has been no federal law enforcement response to either conflict.
- On 5 January armed land grabbers attacked a landless rural workers agrarian reform encampment occupied by 200 families in Colniza in Mato Grosso state. One landless peasant was killed and nine seriously wounded. The landless peasants were awaiting a court ruling as to whether a nearby tract would be deeded to the group.
Bolsonaro hands over indigenous land demarcation to agriculture ministry
- The new president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro has issued an administrative decree shifting the responsibility for indigenous land demarcation from FUNAI, the government’s indigenous affairs office, to the ministry of agriculture.
- Also as part of the decree, Bolsonaro shifted authority over the regularization of quilombola territory (land belonging to runaway slave descendants), from the government’s agrarian reform institute, INCRA, to the ministry of agriculture.
- Critics responded with alarm, seeing the move as a direct conflict of interest. But the bancada ruralista agribusiness lobby in Congress has long demanded this government reorganization, which analysts say will give agribusiness the political levers needed to invade and transform indigenous territories and treat forests as an industrial resource.
- Brazil’s indigenous communities are known to be the best stewards of the Amazon. But Bolsonaro’s moves could signal the weakening, or even the dismantling, of the indigenous reserve system. The potentially resulting wholesale deforestation could be a disaster to indigenous peoples, biodiversity, and even the regional and global climate.
Bolsonaro shapes administration: Amazon, indigenous and landless at risk
- President-elect Jair Bolsonaro has chosen Ricardo Salles as Brazil’s environment minister. The former São Paulo state government environment secretary is under investigation for allegedly redrawing maps allowing protected lands to be developed for mining and factories. His statements are heavily pro-agribusiness and sometimes espouse violence.
- The selection of ruralist Tereza Cristina as agriculture minister, and Ernesto Araújo as foreign minister, also almost certainly signals difficult days ahead for Brazil’s environment. Cristina has pushed hard for fast track approval of toxic pesticides. Araújo calls climate change a “Marxist” conspiracy.
- Analysts say that, by choosing ministry appointees who hold extreme views on the environment, Bolsonaro is making Brazil vulnerable to economic reprisals from the international community – especially from developed nations and companies responding to voters and consumers who oppose harm to the Amazon and indigenous groups.
- Former army officer Bolsonaro has chosen six retired generals to head ministries; other military men join him as VP and chief of staff. Activists fear these appointments will have a chilling effect on Brazilian democracy, leading to repression. Deforestation and violence against activists since the campaign, including assassinations, continue rising in Brazil.
‘Amazon Besieged’: Q&A with Mongabay contributor Sue Branford about new book
- From 2016 to 2017, Mongabay contributors Sue Branford and Maurício Torres traveled to the Tapajós River Basin, in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, to report on the controversial plan to turn the region into a major commodities export corridor.
- Branford and Torres wrote a 15-part investigative series (published in partnership with The Intercept Brazil) based on what they’d found during their travels for Mongabay in the Tapajós Basin, one of the most biodiverse and culturally rich places on Earth. Now, the reporters have turned those pieces into a book, Amazon Besieged, which was published by Practical Action Publishing this month.
- Mongabay spoke with Sue Branford about what new perspectives she gained on the issues covered in the book while compiling her and Torres’ on-the-ground reporting for publication, what she hopes the average reader takes away from Amazon Besieged, and what she thinks the prospects are for the Amazon under the incoming Bolsonaro Administration.
Belo Monte dam Xingu River Management Plan violates human rights: finding
- Construction on the Belo Monte mega-dam, on the Xingu River in Pará state in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, began in 2011. Since then, the giant infrastructure project has met with a near constant flood of contentious protests from indigenous and traditional communities, and from the international environmental community.
- Norte Energia, the consortium that built and operates the troubled project, has been fined or seen its operating license withdrawn by the Brazilian government for a variety of socio-environmental violations, including fish kills and the failure to provide compensation promised at the start of the project to local people and the nearby city of Altamira.
- Local communities, with legal assistance from international civil society organizations, filed a motion to the UN Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) asking for the Belo Monte dam project to be officially labeled a Violation of Human Rights. In November, the Commission’s preliminary conclusions found repeated violations.
- Indigenous communities “suffer from frequent incidents of violence and lack of attention from public services, in addition to increased difficulties and obstacles surrounding claims to their lands,” said Commissioner Antonia Urrejola Noguera, the IACHR Rapporteur for Brazil. Norte Energia has denied the charges.
Extreme floods on the rise in the Amazon: study
- Scientists and the media have documented deepening drought in the Amazon basin. But a new study finds that flood events are significantly intensifying too, becoming five times more common over the last century.
- The effect is caused by a combination of factors, including an increase in strength of the Walker circulation – an ocean-driven pattern of air circulation that carries warm moist air from the tropical Atlantic across South America towards the Pacific, resulting in Amazon precipitation.
- Human-driven climate change is a major contributing factor to this increased Amazon basin flooding. Intensifying flood events result in lives and property lost, and significant harm to croplands, pastures and livestock.
- A better understanding of flood and drought dynamics, and better predictability due partly to this study, could help reduce this damage. How escalating changes in precipitation occurrence and intensity might be altering Amazon flora and fauna is uncertain, though new research shows that tree species composition is altering.
Santo Antônio mega-dam on Brazil’s Madeira River disrupts local lives
- The Santo Antônio mega-dam built in the Amazon has heavily impacted the traditional communities displaced from their homes on the Madeira River. Many local residents were relocated from the riverside to cities, and seriously uprooted from their lifestyles, livelihoods and cultures.
- These local communities say that neither the Santo Antônio Energia Consortium, which built the dam, nor the government have been responsive to their allegations of polluted water, lost fisheries, lack of jobs and difficult urban living conditions.
- Analysts agree that the close relationship between the Brazilian government and large dam building consortiums, energy firms, mining companies and agribusiness – all profiting heavily from new dams – has resulted in local concerns being poorly addressed or ignored in the past.
- Experts also say that the Amazon dam building surge of the past few decades is likely to continue as Brazilian funding sources like the BNDES development bank dry up, but China steps in to fund mega-dams, and smaller hydro projects. Socio-environmental harm could easily escalate.
Mega-dam costs outweigh benefits, global building spree should end: experts
- The environmental and social costs of hydroelectric mega-dams have been grossly underestimated, and will continue to grow further as climate change escalates, a new report finds. Dams have been linked to habitat degradation, harm to biodiversity and migrating aquatic species, and to negative changes in river ecology.
- More problems: dams rarely live up to promoter pledges. Costs are often underestimated, and once built, big dams rarely generate the huge energy amounts promised. River sediment flow estimates are commonly downplayed in plans, and builders rarely take climate change, with its intensifying droughts, into consideration.
- Despite evidence of harmful impacts and disappointing outputs, many more mega-dams are planned in developing nations in Asia, Africa and South America. But when mega-dam environmental and social impact assessments are conducted, they often underestimate harm, and their findings tend to be overlooked.
- A re-vamp of an age-old technology – the water wheel – could offer a reliable energy supply to local communities. Instream Energy Generation (IEG) uses clusters of small turbines, enabling fish and sediments to pass freely while generating power. Wind and solar offer other alternatives to mega-dams.
Bolsonaro pledges government shakeup, deregulation, Amazon development
- Events are unfolding rapidly in Brazil, as president elect Jair Bolsonaro selects members of his administration and continues to propose what many analysts see as sweeping and draconian changes to the Brazilian government and environmental regulations.
- Bolsonaro, while stepping back from plans for a merger of the Environment Ministry with the Agriculture Ministry, still plans major government reorganization. Paulo Guedes, his chief economic advisor, for example, could lead a super ministry merging duties of the Finance, Planning, Industry and Foreign Trade ministries.
- During the presidential campaign, Amazon deforestation rates rose by nearly 50 percent, possibly as Bolsonaro supporters and land grabbers anticipate government retreat from environmental protections. Analysts worry Bolsonaro will criminalize social movements and end the demarcation of indigenous reserves assured by the 1988 Constitution.
- Bolsonaro also chose Tereza Cristina as Agriculture Minister. She is known for her intense support of pesticide deregulation, and for backing a bill to fast track socio-environmental licensing of large infrastructure projects such as dams, railways, roads, industrial waterways, and mines – a position Bolsonaro also supports.
Cerrado farm community fights for life against dam and eucalyptus growers
- A wealth of great rivers caused Brazil in recent years to pursue a frenzy of mega-dam construction in the Amazon and Cerrado, work that enthusiasts claimed would benefit Brazilians with cheap energy. Critics say otherwise, however, noting much of the power produced goes to large mining company operations.
- Analysts also point to completed projects, such as the Belo Monte, Teles Pires, Santo Antonio, Jirau and other dams, that have resulted in significant environmental harm, the displacement of rural indigenous and traditional populations, and to generating massive corruption.
- A case in point can be found in the small town of Formosa in Tocantins state. The building of the Estreito mega-dam, completed in 2008, flooded fields, pastures and homes. The most impacted half of the community was relocated by the consortium of companies that constructed the dam.
- The rest remained and were denied the social and economic benefits they’d been promised by either the government or the dam building consortium, which includes two mining giants, Alcoa and Vale, and Suez Energy and Camargo Corrêa Energia. Many Brazilian mega-dams were planned to offer energy to large mines.
Grainrail: ‘2nd revolution in Brazilian agribusiness’ and Amazon threat
- The BR-163 highway is being overwhelmed with truck traffic moving soy from the interior state of Mato Grosso to ports on the Tapajós River, where the cargo is moved to barges taking it down the Amazon for export to the EU and China. Soy farmers and transnational commodities companies say the answer is a new Amazon railway.
- Ferrogrão (Grainrail) would stretch for 934 kilometers (580 miles), running parallel to the BR-163, from northern Mato Grosso to the port of Miritituba on the Tapajós River. Proponents argue the new rail line would cut freight costs, while reducing shipment times and backlogs, and even decrease greenhouse gas emissions due to transport.
- Conservationists and indigenous groups strongly oppose the plan, saying that the railroad threatens the Amazon rainforest and the Cerrado, would likely have harmful impacts on three indigenous groups, and would open 14 protected areas to illegal intruders, including loggers and ranchers.
- Grainrail has yet to be green lighted, maybe due to Brazil’s political and economic instability. Investors may be waiting to see how the election of Jair Bolsonaro might impact the nation – possibly opening the way for much longed-for Amazon industrial waterways. This story is the first in an exclusive Mongabay series about Grainrail.
Jair Bolsonaro: looming threat to the Amazon and global climate?
- Jair Bolsonaro is poised to win the Brazilian presidential runoff on 28 October – currently polling with 58 percent of the vote. He holds strong policy positions in opposition to the environment, indigenous rights and traditional land claims.
- Bolsonaro has pledged to open the Amazon to economic exploitation, greatly expand energy production, abolish Brazil’s environmental ministry, relax environmental licensing and regulation, open indigenous reserves to mining, and back out of the Paris climate accord.
- Moreover, Bolsonaro’s once tiny PSL Party elected 52 new federal deputies and four senators in the 7 October election. It is very likely that these ultra-right PSL representatives will caucus with the right-wing bancada ruralista agribusiness and mining bloc in Congress, giving them a majority.
- As a result, analysts say that if Bolsonaro is elected president, he will probably have the full support of Congress in fulfilling his agenda, with only the Supreme Court likely standing in the way of significant Amazon deforestation and other environmental harm.
Fate of the Amazon is on the ballot in Brazil’s presidential election (commentary)
- In the late 20th and early 21st century, Brazil set policies that made it a world leader in reducing deforestation, helping safeguard the Amazon.
- However, the gains made over those years are now at risk due to the proposed environmental policies of far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro, who analysts say is highly likely to become Brazil’s president in a runoff election on 28 October.
- Bolsonaro has pledged to shut down Brazil’s environmental ministry, relax environmental law enforcement and licensing, open indigenous reserves to mining, ban international environmental NGOs such as Greenpeace and WWF from the country, and back out of the Paris climate accord.
- A study by this commentary’s authors estimates that Brazilian deforestation and carbon emissions under Bolsonaro’s policies would cause unprecedented Amazon forest loss, and contribute to destabilizing the global climate. This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.
Amazonia and the setbacks of Brazil’s political moment (commentary)
- In the October 7 Brazilian election, far right candidate Jair Bolsonaro won 46 percent of the vote, not enough to earn the presidency, but triggering a runoff election October 28 with Fernando Haddad who came in second with 29 percent. Analysts say that, barring surprises, Bolsonaro could be Brazil’s next leader.
- Bolsonaro was elected based on several issues, including reaction to government corruption and his stance on crime. However, says analyst Philip Fearnside, Jair’s most lasting impacts will likely be on the environment, especially the Amazon, indigenous and traditional peoples, and destabilization of the global climate.
- The candidate has promised to abolish Brazil’s environmental ministry, expel NGOs such as Greenpeace and WWF from the country, slash science and technology budgets, “sell” indigenous lands, and “relax” licensing for major infrastructure projects such as dams, industrial waterways, roads and railways.
- But his most impactful act could be a pledge to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement, ending Brazil’s global commitment to reduce deforestation, triggering massive Amazon forest loss, and possibly runaway climate change. This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Brazilian elections and the environment: where top candidates stand
- The Brazilian elections are just weeks away, scheduled for 7 October. The five leading candidates are Jair Bolsonaro, Marina Silva, Ciro Gomes, Geraldo Alckmin, and Fernando Haddad, though none appears to have sufficient voter backing to win on election-day. A runoff with the top two will occur on 28 October.
- This story offers an overview of the environmental stance of the top five. Jair Bolsonaro, leader in the polls, would pull Brazil out of the Paris Climate Agreement, abolish the Ministry of the Environment, and open the Amazon and indigenous lands for economic exploitation.
- Marina Silva, a former environmental minister, established policies that reduced Amazon deforestation. She would keep Brazil in the Paris Agreement and use it as a means of shifting the nation’s agribusiness sector to be more sustainable, competitive and equitable. Ciro Gomes supports hydroelectric dams and the Paris Agreement.
- Geraldo Alckmin supports agribusiness over environmental. Little is known of Fernando Haddad’s environmental positions, though he’s a strong proponent of bicycling to reduce car use. As important for the environment: the bancada ruralista agribusiness lobby looks poised to grow stronger in congress in the coming election.
Brazilian legislators break law, attack Amazon, trade freely with world: report
- A new Amazon Watch report offers evidence showing that six prominent Brazilian politicians are charged with, and/or guilty of, a variety of environmental, social, and economic crimes. All six are active in the bancada ruralista agribusiness lobby of congress, and all but one are up for election in October.
- According to the report, the six have been strident advocates of the ruralist policies that are slashing environmental protections, exacerbating Amazon deforestation, and rolling back indigenous land rights.
- Yet their agricultural commodities, and those of their political and business allies, are being sold to the U.S. and EU, with importers including soft drinks manufacturers Coca Cola (U.S) and Schweppes (Switzerland), the poultry producer Wiesenhof (Germany) and others.
- The report says that transnational companies and consumers are thus unwittingly empowering the ruralists’ drastic legislative environmental attacks, and it calls for importing countries and companies to take responsibility for their actions. Mongabay profiles two legislators featured in the report: Adilton Sachetti and Nelson Marquezelli.
Chinese / Western financing of roads, dams led to major Andes Amazon deforestation
- International development finance institutions (DFIs) invested heavily in large-scale infrastructure projects that triggered significant deforestation in the Andes Amazon especially within the nations of Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia between 2000 and 2015, according to recent research published by Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center.
- Using satellite data, the study analyzed 84 large infrastructure projects and determined that the area around them experienced tree cover loss at a rate of over four times the average seen in comparable areas without such projects in those countries. That’s a forest carbon-sink loss equivalent to the combined annual CO2 emissions of Colombia, Chile and Ecuador.
- Infrastructure now accounts for 60 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet DFIs want to increase future lending from billions to trillions to meet global demand. This could imperil national Paris Climate Agreement goals (which in countries like Brazil are linked to preventing deforestation), and also could add to potentially catastrophic global carbon emission levels.
- The study isn’t merely academic: More than $70 billion in infrastructure projects, supported by development banks and the private sector, are planned for the Amazon basin between now and 2020. The researchers hope lessons learned from past infrastructure projects and highlighted in their study will improve future project oversight to help curb deforestation.
US/China trade war could boost Brazil soy export, Amazon deforestation
- President Donald Trump is pressing hard for a trade war with China. So far, he has imposed $50 billion in tariffs on the Chinese, and threatened another $200 billion; the Chinese are retaliating. An all-out U.S./China trade war could have serious unforeseen repercussions on the Brazilian Amazon, including increased deforestation, intensified pressures on indigenous groups, and escalated climate change.
- The concern is that China will shift its commodities purchases, including beef and soy, away from the U.S. to Brazil. The Amazon and Cerrado biomes are already major exporters of both commodities, and are creating a boom in infrastructure construction to bring those products to market. Even without a trade war, experts expect Brazil to edge out the U.S. this year as the world´s largest soy producer.
- The U.S. tariffs may already be prompting a shift in trade. Trump first threatened China with tariffs in January. By April, U.S. soy sales to China were down 70,000 metric tons compared to the same period last year. Data also shows a surge in Brazilian Amazon deforestation between February and April of 2018, compared to 2017, a possible response by Brazil soy growers eager to profit from a trade war.
- If the U.S./China trade war results in a significant surge in Brazilian commodities production, deforestation rates there could soar. Scientists worry that Amazon deforestation, now at 17 percent, could be pushed past a 20-25 percent climate tipping point, converting rainforest to savanna, greatly swelling carbon emissions, and potentially destabilizing the regional and even global climate.
Dutch support soy transport mega-project, posing major risk to Amazon
- For more than a decade, the Netherlands has vigorously supported Brazil in development of the Northern Corridor, a mega-infrastructure transportation initiative that would transport soy and other commodities from Matto Grosso state via new road, rail and port projects to the Tapajós River in Pará state, then downriver to the Amazon, and to the Atlantic for export.
- Although the Netherlands government publically says these projects will be constructed in a “sustainable” manner and reduce fuel used in transport, analysts — and even the Dutch government itself — say that the new harbors, roads and railroads would contribute significantly to deforestation, land grabbing and rural violence by bringing many new loggers, cattle ranchers, soy growers, and settlers into the Amazon region.
- Internal documents from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, obtained through a FOIA request, show that the ministry is fully aware of these negative environmental and social impacts, but sees them as a mere public relations, or “reputation problem.”
- Internal memos uncovered by Platform Investico, a Dutch collective of investigative journalists including Mongabay contributor Karlijn Kuijpers, alerted the public to Dutch participation in Brazil’s Amazon transportation infrastructure initiative and the environmental and social harm it could do. In response to these revelations, the Dutch Labor Party has requested a debate in parliament about Dutch involvement in the Northern Corridor.
Attack of the turtles: ruralists assault environmental laws, Amazon
- With the Brazilian public focused on the October elections, and many members of congress gone home to organize runs for office, the bancada ruralista, rural lobby, has launched a raft of amendments, attached to unrelated bills, that would undo many of Brazil’s environmental and indigenous protections. There is a strong chance of passage.
- These stealth measures are known as “jabutis” or “turtles.” Two jabutis, attached to an energy bill, could lead to the privatization of Brazil’s electricity sector, and to allowing the ownership of land by foreigners, currently forbidden in Brazil, for the purpose of building dams, transmission lines, and other energy facilities. Passage could greatly benefit China.
- Another rider, attached to a bill giving emergency humanitarian assistance to Venezuelan refugees, would abolish a legal requirement to consult with indigenous communities about new energy projects to be built beside roads and railways that already cross their lands. The rider would immediately impact the Waimiri-Atroari Indians in Roraima state.
- Another jabuti would benefit Cerrado agribusiness by classifying all proposed irrigation projects as “projects of public interest,” making them easier to approve, with less rigorous environmental impact studies. Another jabuti would simplify the environmental licensing process for small hydroelectric dams, potentially harming both the Amazon and Pantanal.
Damming the Amazon unfettered after Brazilian purge (commentary)
- In January 2018, two key Brazilian officials, Paulo Pedrosa, executive secretary of the Ministry of Mines and Energy (MME), and Luiz Augusto Barroso, the head of Energy Research Enterprise, an MME agency responsible for energy planning, announced a shift away from destructive Amazon mega-dam construction.
- They said the reason for the shift was the heavy environmental and social impacts of such dams.
- After the appointment of Moreira Franco, the new Minister of Mines and Energy, both MME officials were replaced. Franco is under investigation in the lava jato (car wash) corruption probe. Amazon dams are particularly prone to corruption.
- There has been no mention since January that any planned Amazonian dams listed for construction by 2026 will be cancelled. This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
3,000 indigenous people gather in Brasilia to protest ruralist agenda
- From 23-27 April, 3,000 indigenous people from a hundred groups all across Brazil came together in Brasilia for the 15th annual encampment to demonstrate against government policies and to demand justice. While last year’s event saw police crowd control with teargas, this year’s was peaceful.
- This year’s encampment, like last year’s, was among the largest ever, catalysed by rising violence against indigenous leaders and activists, and by what participants see as the repressive and authoritarian policies of the Temer government and Congress, both of which are dominated by the bancada ruralista, the agribusiness lobby.
- Among other demands, the demonstrators called for demarcation of ancestral lands, guaranteed under Brazil’s 1988 Constitution, but not yet carried out in many indigenous areas. Protestors also asked the government to obey International Labour Organization Convention 169, which Brazil signed, and assures pre-consultation of groups impacted by large infrastructure projects.
- Indigenous women had an exceptionally strong presence at this year’s encampment, and there was further collaboration with traditional riverine group representatives, who in the past were sometimes indigenous opponents. Now, indigenous and traditional people are joining together to prevent the loss of their lands and cultures, and to preserve their way of life.
Fish tales: Six amazing journeys to celebrate World Fish Migration Day
- April 21 marks World Fish Migration Day, a biennial event that strives to foster appreciation for the importance of migratory fish and their aquatic swimways.
- Healthy fish stocks with unimpeded migrations are essential to feeding humankind and maintaining the ecological equilibrium of the world’s waters.
- But fish migrations are being increasingly stressed by a worldwide boom in the building of dams that block their essential riverine passage, pollution, overfishing, lowering of water levels for agriculture and drinking water, and climate change.
- Here are six notable fish migrations to consider on this day.
Brazil’s actual forest-related CO2 emissions could blow by Paris pledge
- Brazil is reporting its CO2 emissions within U.N. guidelines, but those rules ignore significant sources of national greenhouse gas emissions ¬by disregarding carbon emitting processes related to forests, say scientists. None of this underreporting is likely unique to Brazil, but it is perhaps more acute there than in other nations due to Brazil’s vast forests.
- The U.N. doesn’t require Brazil and other developing nations to count certain greenhouse gas emissions in detail, especially sources it classifies as non-anthropogenic. This, for example, includes CO2 released from wildfires. However, most fires in the Brazilian Amazon are set by people clearing land, so those CO2 emissions are largely human-caused.
- Forest degradation, methane emitted from reservoirs, and carbon released from soils where forests are converted to croplands or pastures go partly or totally untallied in emission reports, sometimes because data is lacking, or because the UN hasn’t included the source in its reporting criteria. Another problem: low-resolution satellite monitoring allows small-scale deforestation to go undetected, so is unreported.
- As a result, Brazil’s actual carbon emissions are almost certainly higher than the figures reported to the United Nations — how much higher is unknown. But, experts say, that if this missing carbon were added to Brazil’s reported emissions, the nation would likely not meet its 2025 Paris Climate Agreement goal.
Brazil’s high court curbs executive power to dismember protected areas
- Last week, Brazil’s Supreme Court (STF) ruled that MP 558, a Provisional Measure, was unconstitutional, making it unlawful for the executive branch to use the administrative decree to reduce seven conservation units by 100,000 hectares — five of those units were in the Tapajós basin.
- In addition, the STF ruled that in future it would be unconstitutional for the executive branch to use MPs to alter the boundaries of already established conservation units. Such reductions can only be approved by the legislature.
- MPs can continue to be used in setting other policies, some harmful to the environment. Past MPs approved the building of new coal burning power plants, and for dramatically revising the Terra Legal program, revising it not to benefit the landless poor, but wealthy elites and land grabbers, say critics.
- In another win for conservationists, environment minister José Sarney Filho created five new Brazilian conservation units last week, covering 1.2 million hectares. Two were created in Bahia state, in the Cerrado savanna biome; and three in Maranhão state, in the Caatinga tropical dry forest biome.
NGOs denounce Tapajós basin intimidation, violence, Brazil inaction
- Thirty-eight national and international civil society organizations (CSOs), including social movements and NGOs, have condemned the Brazilian government and the builders of four Teles Pires River dams in the Amazon. The groups denounce the dam consortium for acts of intimidation against indigenous groups, especially involving the newly built São Manoel dam.
- This dam was built by the Sao Manoel Energy Consortium, headed by the Brazilian subsidiaries of China Three Gorges Corporation, Energia de Portugal, and state company Furnas. The CSOs/NGOs say the Temer government sent in a national police unit as a “private security firm” to defend the dam builders and intimidate indigenous groups.
- The CSOs/NGOs also say the government is in violation of numerous laws regarding the São Manoel dam, including a failure to properly consult with indigenous communities, threats made to those groups, incomplete environmental impact studies, and failure to implement agreed to “conditions” made by authorities in return for dam authorization.
- Elsewhere, riverside communities on the Tapajós River, frustrated with government delays to meet a legal obligation to demarcate their lands, took action to mark the borders themselves. Illegal loggers and miners responded with threats of violence. The Brazilian government has done nothing so far to protect these traditional communities.
Brazilian lawmakers funded by donors guilty of environmental crimes: report
- The Brazilian Chamber of Deputies has 513 members. Of those, 249 received a total of 58.9 million reais (US$18.3 million) in official donations during the 2014 election from companies and people who committed environmental crimes, including illegal clearing of forests, says a recent report by Repórter Brasil.
- Receiving these donations is not a crime, but it does provide insight into how environmental offenders are connected to, and potentially influencing, lawmakers and their decisions. Of the 249 deputies who received tainted donations, 134 are members of the Bancada Ruralista, the pro-agribusiness rural caucus that dominates the chamber.
- Since the 2014 general election, Brazil’s election laws have been tightened. In 2015, the Federal Supreme Court passed a decree that made it illegal for companies to donate to candidates and political parties. These new rules will be in effect for the October 2018 presidential election.
- Analysts still worry that money from those who have committed environmental crimes will go right on flowing to politicians — possibly illegally or utilizing newly discovered campaign finance law loopholes — risking the possibility of influence peddling.
Small hydropower a big global issue overlooked by science and policy
- Brazil recently announced an end to its mega-dam construction policy, a strategy other nations may embrace as understanding of the massive environmental and social impacts of big dams grows.
- However, a trend long neglected by scientists and policymakers ¬ the rapid growth of small dams – has been spotlighted in a new study.
- Nearly 83,000 small dams in 150 nations (with 11 small dams for each large dam), exist globally, while that number could triple if all capacity worldwide is used. More than 10,000 new small dams are already in the planning stages. But small dam impacts have been little studied by scientists, and little regulated by governments.
- Environmentalists say that, with the rapid construction of new small dams, it is urgent for researchers to assess the impacts of different types of small dams, as well as looking at the cumulative impacts of many small dams placed on a single river, or on main stems and tributaries within watersheds.
Andes dams twice as numerous as thought are fragmenting the Amazon
- A new study identified 142 dams currently in operation or under construction in the Andes headwaters of the Amazon, twice the number previously estimated. An additional 160 are in the planning stages.
- If proposed Andes dams go ahead, sediment transport to the Amazon floodplains could cease, blocking freshwater fish migratory routes, disrupting flow and flood regimes, and threatening food security for downstream communities, impacting up to 30 million people.
- Most dams to date are on the tributary networks of Andean river main stems. But new dams are planned for five out of eight major Andean Amazon main stems, bringing connectivity reductions on the Marañón, Ucayali and Beni rivers of more than 50 percent; and on the Madre de Dios and Mamoré rivers of over 35 percent.
- Researchers conclude that proposed dams should be required to complete cumulative effects assessments at a basin-wide scale, and account for synergistic impacts of existing dams, utilizing the UN Watercourses Convention as a legal basis for international cooperation for sustainable water management between Amazon nations.
Norsk Hydro accused of Amazon toxic spill, admits ‘clandestine pipeline’
- Norsk Hydro’s Alunorte aluminum refining facility in Barcarena municipality, Pará state, has been accused by Brazilian authorities of contaminating the local waters of several communities with toxic waste that overflowed earlier this month from a holding basin.
- The firm denied the allegation, but has agreed to provide water to local residents, and is investigating.
- The government also accused the company of having a “clandestine pipeline to discharge untreated effluent,” an allegation that the Norwegian state firm has since admitted to being true.
- Officials have yet to determine the full cause, scope or consequence of the spill, while locals complain that this isn’t the first time. According to IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental agency, Norsk Hydro has not paid fines set at R $17 million to date (US $5.27 million), after a toxic overflow in 2009 put the local Barcarena population at risk.
Belo Monte legacy: harm from Amazon dam didn’t end with construction (photo story)
- The controversial Belo Monte dam, operational in 2016 and the world’s third biggest, was forced on the people of Altamira, Pará state, and is now believed to have been built largely as payback to Brazil’s construction industry by the nation’s then ruling Workers’ Party for campaign contributions received.
- The dam was opposed by an alliance of indigenous and traditional communities, and international environmentalists, all to no avail. Today, the media coverage that once turned the world’s eyes toward Belo Monte, has gone away. But that hasn’t ended the suffering and harm resulting from the project.
- Tens of thousands of indigenous and traditional people were forced from their homes, and had to give up their fishing livelihoods. Meanwhile, the city of Altamira endured boom and bust, as workers flooded in, then abandoned it. The Belo Sun goldmine, if ever built, also continues to be a potential threat.
- In this story, Mongabay contributor Maximo Anderson and photographer Aaron Vincent Elkaim document the ongoing harm being done by the giant dam. Belo Monte, today, stands as a warning regarding the urgent need to properly assess and plan for mega-infrastructure projects in Amazonia.
Protected areas with deforestation more likely to lose status in Brazilian state
- A recent study finds that ineffective protected areas stand a lower chance of surviving if deforestation has occurred within their boundaries.
- The research took place in the state of Rondônia in the Brazilian Amazon.
- The team of scientists also found that protected areas that work are less likely to be carved up for development.
- The authors argue that removing safeguards, even from degraded areas, does not take into account the benefits that we may derive from existing protected areas, including carbon storage and clean water.
David Suzuki on why indigenous knowledge is critical for human survival
- On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast we feature a conversation with iconic Canadian scientist, author, television presenter, and activist David Suzuki.
- Mongabay interviewed Suzuki last year about the Blue Dot Movement, which aims to enshrine the right to a healthy environment in the Canadian Constitution, and we thought now, at the start of 2018, would be a great time to check in with him about what progress has been made.
- Suzuki also discusses the environmental issues he thinks are most pressing as we forge ahead into the new year and his plans to convene a gathering of First Nations keepers of traditional ecological knowledge with Western scientists.
Pope set to visit site of deforestation, indigenous struggle in Peru
- Pope Francis plans to visit Puerto Maldonado in the Peruvian region of Madre de Dios Friday morning on his trip to South America.
- He will speak with indigenous communities in a coliseum.
- Madre de Dios had the second-highest rate of deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon in 2017, with 208 square kilometers (80 square miles) of forest cover loss as a result of farming, logging and mining.
Study: Amazon dams are disrupting ecologically vital flood pulses
- Flood pulses are critical to the way the Amazon, its tributaries and other tropical rivers function – and these seasonal flood pulses are a huge driver of ecological productivity and diversity.
- Floodplain forests depend upon annual flood pulses to bring nutrients and sediment from river channels out into the surrounding terrestrial habitat.
- Reductions to flood pulses, brought by Amazon dams both large and small, could lead to shifts in tree species diversity and composition, with implications for carbon storage and emissions.
- Unreliable flood regimes, as created by dams of all sizes, significantly impact Amazon river systems and species’ life cycles, population dynamics, food sources, and habitats above and below the water line.
Brazil 2018: Amazon under attack, resistance grows, courts to act, elections
- While forecasts are always difficult, it seems likely that Brazilian President Michel Temer will remain in power for the last year of his term, despite on-going corruption investigations.
- Elections for president, the house of deputies, and most of the senate are scheduled for October. Former President Lula has led the presidential polls, though right wing candidate Jair Bolsonaro has grown strong. Lula’s environmental record is mixed; Bolsonaro would almost certainly be bad news for the environment, indigenous groups and the Amazon.
- During 2018, Temer, Congress and the bancada ruralista (a lobby representing agribusiness, cattle ranchers, land thieves and other wealthy rural elites) will likely seek to undermine environmental laws and indigenous land rights further. Potential paving of the BR 319 in the heart of the Amazon is considered one of the biggest threats.
- However, grassroots environmental and indigenous resistance continues to grow, and important Brazilian Supreme Court decisions are expected in the weeks and months ahead, which could undo some of the major gains made by the ruralists under Temer.
Brazil announces end to Amazon mega-dam building policy
- Brazil’s government this week announced a major shift away from its policy of building mega-dams in the Brazilian Amazon – a strategy born during the country’s military dictatorship (1964-1985) and vigorously carried forward down to the present day.
- 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.
Brazil 2017: environmental and indigenous rollbacks, rising violence
- The bancada ruralista, or ruralist lobby, in Brazil’s congress flexed its muscles in 2017, making numerous demands on President Michel Temer to make presidential decrees weakening environmental protections and revoking land rights to indigenous and traditional communities in Brazil – decisions especially impacting the Amazon.
- Emboldened ruralists – including agribusiness, cattle ranchers, land thieves and loggers – stepped up violent attacks in 2017, making Brazil the most dangerous country in the world for social or environmental activists. There were 63 assassinations by the end of October.
- Budgets to FUNAI, the indigenous agency; IBAMA, the environmental agency; and other institutions, were reduced so severely this year that these government regulatory agencies were largely unable to do their enforcement and protection work.
- In 2017, Temer led attempts to dismember Jimanxim National Forest and National Park, and to open the vast RENCA preserve in the Amazon to mining – efforts that have failed to date, but are still being pursued. Resistance has remained fierce, especially among indigenous groups, with Temer sometimes forced to backtrack on his initiatives.
Amazon dam impacts underestimated due to overlooked vine growth: study
- New research on the rapid growth of lianas – native woody vines – on the artificial reservoir islands of the Balbina dam in the Amazon finds that forest communities there underwent a transformation as a result of severe habitat fragmentation, resulting in the altering of the carbon sequestration and emission balance.
- Some tree species are severely impacted by this extreme form of habitat fragmentation and die, while native lianas — woody vines that climb to reach the forest canopy — thrive and rapidly fill the biological niche left by failing trees.
- Trees, with their greater biomass, store more carbon in trunks and branches than lianas, so the carbon balance shifts as lianas dominate. Rather than sequestering carbon, these dam-created islands end up emitting carbon as the trees die.
- The rapid growth of lianas further contributes to the degradation of remnant tree communities challenged by fragmentation. Amazon dam environmental impact assessments don’t currently evaluate increased reservoir island carbon emissions.
Damming or damning the Amazon: Assessing Ecuador / China cooperation
- In 2008, Ecuador, led by President Rafael Correa, approved a new constitution based upon Buen Vivir (the ”Good Life”), committing the nation to indigenous rights, environmental sustainability and state sovereignty. However, Correa quickly aligned the nation with China, a partnership that many critics say undermined the promises of the constitution.
- Under Correa, China became Ecuador’s primary creditor and Chinese investment, both public and private, resulted in an infrastructure boom in new dams, mines, oilrigs, roads, power transmission lines, telecommunications systems and schools.
- During Correa’s administration, eight major dams were built, including Coca Coda Sinclair (CCS) constructed by Chinese state corporation Sinohydro. While CCS promised local prosperity, residents of surrounding communities say the government provided them with no say in the project, which has created serious environmental problems.
- In May, a new president, Lenin Moreno, was elected. He has so far not followed in Correa’s footsteps, and his administration seems set on deemphasizing the relationship with China, with few major infrastructure projects currently in the works. However a power struggle in the ruling Alianza País Party has made Ecuador’s political path forward less than clear.
From carbon sink to source: Brazil puts Amazon, Paris goals at risk
- Brazil is committed to cutting carbon emissions by 37 percent from 2005 levels by 2025, to ending illegal deforestation, and restoring 120,000 square kilometers of forest by 2030. Scientists warn these Paris commitments are at risk due to a flood of anti-environmental and anti-indigenous measures forwarded by President Michel Temer.
- “If these initiatives succeed, Temer will go down in history with the ruralistas as the ones who put a stake in the beating heart of the Amazon.” — Thomas Lovejoy, conservation biologist and director of the Center for Biodiversity and Sustainability at George Mason University.
- “The Temer government’s reckless behavior flies in the face of Brazil’s commitments to the Paris Agreement.” — Christian Poirier, program director at Amazon Watch.
- “There was, or maybe there still is, a very slim chance we can avoid a catastrophic desertification of South America. No doubt, there will be horrific damage if the Brazilian government initiatives move forward in the region.” — Antonio Donato Nobre, scientist at INPA, the Institute for Amazonian Research.
Mining activity causing nearly 10 percent of Amazon deforestation
- Scientists have learned that nearly 10 percent of the deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon between 2005 and 2015 was due to mining activities. Previously, it was thought to cause just 1-2 percent, but that is because past assessments primarily looked at deforestation caused by the mines themselves, and didn’t account for all the ancillary infrastructure that accompanies the mines.
- With mining causing such high levels of deforestation — up to 70 kilometers away from mines — and with the Brazilian government under Michel Temer eager to open vast areas of the Amazon to mining, the researchers say that companies and government need to aggressively address the deforestation issue.
- While the new research documented Amazon deforestation due to many ancillary activities, including roads, staff housing and airports, it did not look into the major deforestation brought by
the new hydroelectric dams that often provide energy for mining operations
- To address the high level of deforestation caused by mining in the Amazon, Brazil needs to significantly revise its environmental impact assessment process to include ancillary infrastructure up to 70 kilometers away from mines along with related hydroelectric dam construction.
Belo Monte dam-opposing Brazilian activist wins prestigious environmental award
- Brazilian environmental and human rights activist Antônia Melo da Silva received the Alexander Soros Foundation Award earlier this month in recognition of her work organizing opposition to the Belo Monte dam and other infrastructure projects in the Amazon.
- Melo founded the “Movimento Xingu Vivo Para Sempre” two decades ago in order to bring together the numerous people, communities, and organizations in the Altamira region of Brazil who oppose the Belo Monte hydroelectric project on the Xingu River.
- Alex Soros, founder of the Alexander Soros Foundation, said of Melo: “She will not be deterred. She will not stop fighting. She will never give up. And she deserves recognition and appreciation for her work.”
Amazonian manatee migration at risk from disruption by proposed dams
- Amazonian manatees (Trichechus inunguis) spend the high-water season feeding in flooded forests, but migrate to deeper permanent water bodies to see out the dry season.
- Researchers have found that as the dry season approaches, manatees time their migration out of the floodplain to avoid bottlenecks that would block their route, and doom them.
- But, the scientists warn, those bottlenecks will become far more common, and less predictable, if the hundreds of hydropower dams planned for the Amazon go forward.
- The dams, and the bottleneck problem they create, “generates profound concern for the conservation of manatees,” the scientists write.
Munduruku standoff against Amazon dam builders potentially explosive
- On 13 October, eighty Munduruku warriors and shamans tried to occupy the São Manoel dam on the Teles Pires River in one of the most remote parts of the Amazon. But the government and construction companies had been tipped off in advance.
- Thirty armed Public Security National Force police had been flown in and blocked them from entering the site. The Munduruku were met by teargas and flash bombs. They have since left the immediate vicinity, but their demands remain unresolved.
- The Munduruku say that the construction firms, to end a July occupation of the dam, had agreed to a September meeting and to apologize for the destruction of two of their most sacred sites — one of them the equivalent of Christian Heaven — and to apologize for collecting and storing sacred urns without proper rituals.
- According to the Indians, the performance of these apology rituals is now vital to the survival of the Munduruku as a people, and to the survival of the Amazon itself, but the companies remain adamant in their denial of wrongdoing. Tensions remain high, and many fear more violence could erupt.
Amazon community on Tapajós River invaded by wildcat miners
- The Brazilian community of Montanha-Mangabal made up of beiradeiros —riverside peasant farmers and traditional fishermen — has been invaded and threatened by angry wildcat miners.
- The beiradeiros community spread for miles along the Tapajós River in Pará, worked for decades to establish its legal land rights, achieved in 2013 when Brazil’s National Colonization and Agrarian Reform Institute (INCRA) turned the land into a 550 square kilometer Agro-Extractive Settlement (PAE).
- However, the federal government failed to meet its obligation to demarcate the land. As a measure of last resort, Montanha-Mangabal and Munduruku indigenous allies began marking the land’s boundaries in September using GPS and signs.
- This self-demarcation process apparently led to the miners’ invasion, as they illegitimately claim some of the community’s land. The beiradeiros, Munduruku, and other indigenous groups see the invasion as part of a bigger threat by Brazilian ruralists and the government to develop the Amazon.
Amazon dam operator defies order to shut down, police action looms
- In 2011, the Norte Energia consortium made an agreement with the Brazilian government to provide adequate housing to the more than 20,000 people to be displaced from their homes due to the building of the Belo Monte dam in Pará state in the Amazon.
- On September 20th a federal court suspended Norte Energia’s installation license and ordered it to shut down the dam because it violated that agreement, breaking pledges to provide different-sized houses to accommodate variously sized families, and to resettle displaced people within two kilometers of their original homes.
- The court order, which went into immediate effect, included an exceptional provision that federal police could be called on to force Norte Energia to comply with the ruling and shut down the dam.
- The consortium has so far refused to cease operations at the dam, and argues that it has yet to see the court order, and that its operating license supersedes its installation license.
Amazon dam defeats Brazil’s environment agency (commentary)
- The term “controversial” is inadequate to describe the São Manoel Dam.
- It is located only 700 m from the Kayabí Indigenous Land and has already provoked a series of confrontations with the indigenous people.
- As with other dams, São Manoel can be expected to negatively affect the fish and turtles that are vital food sources for the Kayabí, Munduruku and Apiacá indigenous groups.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author.
Andes dams could threaten food security for millions in Amazon basin
- More than 275 hydroelectric projects are planned for the Amazon basin, the majority of which could be constructed in the Andes whose rivers supply over 90 percent of the basin’s sediments and over half its nutrients.
- A new study projects huge environmental costs for six of these dams, which together will retain 900 million tons of river sediment annually, reducing supplies of phosphorus and nitrogen, and threatening fish populations and soil quality downstream.
- Accumulating sediments upstream of dams are projected to release 10 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year, significantly contributing to global warming, and would contaminate waters and the aquatic life they support with mercury.
- The construction of these dams should be reconsidered to preserve food security and the livelihoods of millions of people in the Amazon Basin.
Belo Monte dam installation license suspended, housing inadequacy cited
- A federal court has suspended the installation license of the Belo Monte mega-dam in the state of Pará, Brazil. The dam, slated to have the world’s third-largest generating capacity, became operational in 2015, but won’t see construction finished until 2019.
- The court ordered further construction halted until Norte Energia met the commitments it made in 2011 to provide adequate housing for those displaced by the dam, including indigenous and traditional people that had been living along the Xingu River.
- Among commitment violations cited were houses built without space for larger families, houses built from different materials than promised, and homes constructed too far from work, schools and shopping in Altamira, a city lacking a robust public transportation system.
- The consortium continues to operate the dam, as its operating license has not been suspended.
Transformance: Finding common ground in the Amazon (commentary)
- The Fórum Bem Viver (Good Life Forum) met earlier this month to bring together indigenous leaders, military police, a federal judge, television actors, musicians, journalists, scientists and activists from eight countries and 14 Brazilian states.
- The event, organized by the eco-cultural education nonprofit Rios de Encontro, utilized arts performances and workshops to seek common ground between participants regarding sustainable solutions in the Amazon.
- The event was held in Marabá, Pará state, which is home to the Carajás mine, the world’s largest iron ore mine, and the community sits beside the Tocantins River where a dam is proposed upstream.
- Participants sought solutions for turning Marabá into an “example of sustainable development for the Amazon, the Americas, and the world.” This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Brazilian firm wants to build new dams in Amazon’s Aripuanã basin
- With the bancada ruralista mining / agribusiness lobby in control of the Temer government and Congress, a Brazilian company, Intertechne Consultores, sees it as an opportune time to revive a shelved plan to build dams in the Amazon’s Aripuanã basin.
- The company has asked federal officials to allow viability studies for 3 new dams in this very remote, biodiverse region — the Sumaúma and Quebra Remo dams on the Aripuanã River, and the Inferninho dam on its tributary, the Roosevelt River.
- The Inferninho dam, if built, would highly impact the Cinta Larga Indians, the victims of Brazilian-inflicted genocide in the 1960s. The Roosevelt Indigenous Reserve contains one of the world’s five largest diamond reserves, a cause of past violent conflicts.
- Moves may be afoot in Congress to end a ban of mining on indigenous lands. If passed, a new law could allow mining on Cinta Larga land, with new mines potentially powered by the new hydroelectric dams. These projects, if built, would likely be a source of intense new controversy and conflict in the Amazon.
HydroCalculator: new, free, online tool helps citizens assess dams
- With mega-dams planned globally, especially in the Amazon and Mekong, the Conservation Strategy Fund (CSF), an NGO, has developed a new free tool for evaluating a planned dam’s economic viability, greenhouse gas emissions and more.
- The HydroCalculator estimates the net economic value of a proposed dam, with and without the cost of greenhouse gas emissions factored in, number of years required before a project generates a profit, and years until net emissions become negative.
- The tool has been used by CSF, International Rivers, and a development bank and found to be very useful. Its forecasts have been tested against the economic viability and carbon emissions of existing dams, and found accurate.
- The HydroCalculator is meant for use by communities, researchers and activists who are often closed out of the technical dam planning process. It is available free online.
Brazil’s Temer threatens constitutional indigenous land rights
- President Temer, influenced by the rural lobby in congress whose votes he needs to not be tried by the Supreme Court on corruption charges, has okayed new criteria meant to delegitimize indigenous land boundary claims, legal experts say.
- One rule rejects any indigenous demarcation of land where Indians were not physically present on a traditional territory in 1988, which would disqualify many legitimate claims.
- Another allows government to undertake “strategic” public works, such as dams and roads, without indigenous consent, violating the International Labor Organization’s 169 Convention, signed by Brazil.
- The administration also introduced a bill likely to be passed by congress that reclassifies 349,000 hectares (1,347 square miles) of Jamanxim National Forest in the Amazon, gutting protections, allowing economic activities — logging, ranching, farming and mining — and legitimizing land grabs there.
Amazonian city drags down fish stocks in 1,000-kilometer shadow
- A study of tambaqui, a popular table fish, in the Brazilian Amazon found that fish caught near the city of Manaus are half the size of those upriver.
- Boats that buy the fish have brought the demand into the forest surrounding the city, and with holds full of ice, they’re able to travel further to bring tambaqui back to Manaus’ markets.
- The fishers living in the relatively pristine forest along the Purus River reported that tambaquie are smaller and harder to catch than they were previously, a trend extended 1,000 kilometers from Manaus, the researchers found.
Global megadam activism and the sounds of nature in Taiwan
- Activists from around the world attended the conference to strategize around stopping what they see as destructive hydropower projects. As Bardeen relates in her commentary, many attendees at the conference have faced harassment, intimidation, and worse for their opposition to dam projects, but they’re still standing strong in defense of free-flowing rivers.
- We also speak with Yannick Dauby, a French sound artist based in Taiwan. Since 2002, Dauby has been crafting sound art out of field recordings made throughout the small country of Taiwan and posting them on his website, Kalerne.net.
- In this Field Notes segment, Dauby plays a recording of his favorite singer, a frog named Rhacophorus moltrechti; the sounds of the marine life of the corals of Penghu, which he is documenting together with biologists; the calls bats use to echolocate (slowed down 16 times so they can be heard by human ears!); and more!
- All that plus the top news on this episode of the Mongabay Newscast!
Brazil’s indigenous Munduruku occupy dam site, halt construction
- The Munduruku say their sacred sites were destroyed to make way for other hydroelectric projects. Experts say the dams are also blocking fish migration routes.
- The Munduruku are making a series of concrete demands they want fulfilled before they end the occupation.
- The director of São Manoel Energia, the construction consortium building the dam, said that construction work would be halted for the duration of the occupation.
- A prosecutor and acting head of Brazil’s FUNAI Indian agency will be visiting the site of the occupation this week.
Soy King Blairo Maggi wields power over Amazon’s fate, say critics
- Brazil’s Blairo Maggi made a fortune with vast Mato Grosso soy plantations in Legal Amazonia. Today, Amaggi Group, the family company, dominates the nation’s agribusiness sector — profiting from farm commodities, and the roads, railways, and industrial waterways that transport them.
- Maggi rose through Brazilian politics, becoming Mato Grosso’s governor, a senator, and today, the Temer administration’s agriculture minister. He is also a leader of the bancada ruralista, the agribusiness lobby, that dominates Brazilian government.
- Once known as the Soy King, Maggi has often pushed anti-environmental agribusiness policies, including those resulting in major Amazon deforestation, ending indigenous land demarcation, and harmful infrastructure projects putting biodiversity at risk. He has also, paradoxically, worked to end illegal logging and to reduce deforestation.
- On Monday, 17 July, Maggi will meet with the Trump administration to urge the U.S. to lift its ban on Brazilian beef, a ban prompted by scandal involving a corrupt federal meat inspection service overseen by his ministry. Maggi was recently accused of corruption by federal Lava Jato investigators. He continues to shape Amazon policies.
DJ remixes the sounds of birds, lemurs, and more to inspire conservation
- Our first guest is Ben Mirin, aka DJ Ecotone, an explorer, wildlife DJ, educator, and television presenter who creates music from the sounds of nature to help inspire conservation efforts.
- In this very special Field Notes segment, Mirin discusses his craft and some of the challenges of capturing wildlife sounds in the field — including why it can be so difficult to record dolphins when all they want to do is take a bow ride on your boat.
- We also speak with Cleve Hicks, author of a children’s book called A Rhino to the Rescue: A Tale of Conservation and Adventure, not only to express his love of nature but to help raise awareness of the poaching crisis decimating Africa’s rhino population.
- All that plus the top news on this episode of the Mongabay Newscast!
Amazon infrastructure EIAs under-assess biodiversity; scientists offer solutions
- In a new paper, scientists assert that environmental impact assessments (EIAs) for major Brazilian Amazon infrastructure projects often fail in their performance of comprehensive biodiversity evaluations, so underestimate ecosystem risk.
- Their proposed solution is the development and use within EIAs of multiple, complementary scientific methods they say would be cost effective, and make more comprehensive biodiversity assessments possible.
- These methods include satellite imaging, near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy, and DNA metabarcoding to detect a wider range of species. The scientists propose these methods be implemented to improve pre-construction biodiversity surveys and EIAs.
- A major concern by researchers is that Brazil’s Congress is currently considering legislation that would do away with the existing environmental licensing process, and reduce or eliminate existing EIA requirements.
Study: Brazilian mega-dams caused far more flooding than EIA predicted
- A satellite study of the Santo Antônio and Jirau dams in the Amazon found the area flooded by their reservoirs to be much greater than projected by the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) done as part of the Brazilian dams’ licensing process.
- Satellite images from 2006-2015 were analyzed, spanning the time immediately before, during, and after dam construction, and then these images were compared with the flooding predictions found in the EIA.
- The total flooded area upstream of the dams was found to be 69.8 percent larger than projected by the EIA. The area of natural forest flooded exceeded EIA predictions by 52 percent.
- Political considerations likely influenced the EIAs gross inaccuracy, with real world results. In 2014, Madeira River floods upriver from the dams impacted 75,000 people, killed a quarter-million livestock and caused over US $180 million in damage.
Unexamined synergies: dam building and mining go together in the Amazon
- 40 large hydroelectric dams are slated for the Amazon basin over the next 20 years, feeding the massive electricity needs of an energy-hungry mining industry — digging, processing and exporting iron, aluminum, manganese and gold.
- But mining’s energy needs are rarely linked to plans for new dams or their environmental impact assessments. Amazon mining and dam building have repeatedly in the past resulted in major harmful environmental and social impacts, including displacement of indigenous and traditional communities.
- Transnational mining companies and consortiums are major beneficiaries of government largesse through subsidies, tax breaks and the energy obtained from newly commissioned Amazon dams.
- Brazilian infrastructure development in the Amazon, including dam building and mining, could — if environmental and social issues are not properly addressed — turn the Amazon into a national sacrifice zone where biological and cultural diversity are drastically diminished.
International action a must to stop irreversible harm of Amazon dams, say experts
- A study, published in Nature and led by Edgardo Latrubesse of the University of Texas at Austin, went beyond local impacts of individual dams to assess cumulative, basin-wide impacts that planned dams are bringing to 19 major Amazon sub-basins.
- The team developed a new metric: the Dam Environmental Vulnerability Index (DEVI) which includes assessments of basin integrity (vulnerability to land use change and erosion, etc.); fluvial dynamics (influence of sediment fluxes and flood pulses); and the extent of the river affected by dams.
- A score for each sub-basin from 0-100 was assigned, with higher values indicating greater vulnerability. The Madeira, Ucayali, Marañon and Tapajós sub-basins were found to be most threatened; all had DEVI totals higher than 60.
- The researchers say that a collective, cooperative, multi-country Amazon region assessment of dams and their cumulative impacts is urgently needed to get a handle on the true magnitude of the threat to the Amazon, as well as means to a solution.
Brazil assaults indigenous rights, environment, social movements
- The Temer administration and Congress, dominated by the increasingly militant bancada ruralista agribusiness lobby, are encouraging violence, say critics, as attacks reach record levels against the landless peasants of the agrarian reform movement and against indigenous groups fighting for land rights assured by the 1988 Constitution.
- In May a Parliamentary Commission of Enquiry, dominated by the bancada, recommended prosecution of 67 people, many of them serving in the federal government, who the commission claims have allegedly committed illegal acts by supporting indigenous groups and their land claims.
- Also in May, Congress approved MPs (administrative orders), handed down by Temer, removing 486,000 hectares of the National Forest of Jamanxim and 101,000 hectares of the National Park of Jamanxim from protection, likely allowing land thieves to claim these formerly protected Amazon areas for private ownership, ranching and mining.
- The Chamber of Deputies also rushed through MP 759, giving real estate ownership rights to hundreds of thousands of small land owners illegally occupying land in Brazil. Critics say the MP is also a massive gift to wealthy land thieves. Another bill, now on hold, could gut environmental licensing rules for infrastructure and agribusiness projects.
A stubborn dreamer who fought to save Amazon’s Waimiri-Atroari passes
- As a young man in the 1960s, José Porfirio Fontenele de Carvalho decided to resist Brazil’s brutal military dictatorship by going into the Amazon to help indigenous groups in their struggles against the military’s assault on their way of life.
- He made early contact with the warlike Waimiri-Atroari Indians, who were decimated in their struggle to block the BR-174 highway through their territory. The Indians tell of numerous atrocities committed against them by the government during this period.
- With Carvalho’s help, a new indigenous reserve, covering 2.6 million hectares (10,000 square miles), was established, along with a conservation unit — the Biological Reserve of Uatumã. Through the years, Carvalho won other concessions for the Waimiri-Atroari.
- Today, the group has increased its number to nearly 2,000, though the tribe continues fighting the government. President Temer is now determined to put a major transmission line through their lands. Most observers agree: without Carvalho’s assist, the Waimiri-Atroari would likely be extinct, and their forests gone. He died this month at age 70.
Amazon’s fate hangs on outcome of war between opposing worldviews
- The battle for the Amazon is being fought over two opposing viewpoints: the first, mostly held by indigenous and traditional people and their conservationist allies, sees forests and rivers as valuable for their own sake, and for the livelihoods, biodiversity, ecological services and climate change mitigation they provide. For them the forests need protection.
- The second worldview holds that Amazon forests are natural resources to be harvested and turned into dollars, an outlook largely held by wealthy landowners, land thieves, loggers, cattle ranchers and farmers. For them the forests are there to be cut down, and the land is there to be used for economic benefit.
- The bancada ruralista agribusiness lobby now has overwhelming political power in the Brazilian Congress and the Temer administration, which are pushing a raft of bills and administrative actions to take away indigenous land rights, dismember conservation units, gut environmental licensing laws and defund environmental protection agencies.
- The great fear is that the collision of the two worldviews in the wilds of the Amazon will result in escalating lawlessness and bloodshed against indigenous and traditional people, along with significant environmental destruction. The loss of Amazon ecosystems could be catastrophic for humanity, as the region’s forests are crucial for global carbon storage.
Judge halts excavation plans for largest-ever Brazilian goldmine
- The Belo Sun goldmine, to be Brazil’s largest, would use cyanide and other industrial processes to produce 5 million ounces of gold over 12 years. The company´s environmental impact assessment says it will process nearly 35 million tons of rock. The open-pit mine would leave behind gigantic solid waste piles covering many hectares, plus a huge toxic waste impoundment near the Xingu River.
- A Brazilian judge suspended the project’s installation license this week, faulting the Canadian company that would be excavating Belo Sun with improperly acquiring federal land and potentially removing families from those lands to “reduce social costs.”
- The proposed Belo Sun goldmine is within a short distance of the controversial Belo Monte dam, which has dislocated residents, caused deforestation, and harmed the environment, causing major fish kills on the Xingu River, a major tributary of the Amazon River. Residents are concerned that the addition of the nation’s biggest goldmine will do more severe harm.
- Residents fear that a failure of the Belo Sun toxic waste impoundment dam would create a disaster on the Xingu River similar in scale to the Samarco Fundão dam collapse in 2015, which dumped roughly 50 million tons of toxic iron ore waste into the Doce River, polluting it for 500 miles, all the way to the Atlantic Ocean, and causing Brazil´s largest environmental disaster.
Getting there: The rush to turn the Amazon into a soy transport corridor
- The development over the last 40 years of Mato Grosso state in Brazil’s interior as an industrial agribusiness powerhouse has, from the beginning, been hindered by a major economic problem: how to get the commodities to the coast for profitable export.
- The first route of export from Mato Grosso was a costly and time-consuming southern one, with commodities trucked on a circuitous route to Santos in São Paulo state and Paranaguá in Paraná state on the Atlantic coast.
- The paving of the northern section of BR-163, running south to north through Pará state, opened a much less expensive, faster route, with commodities now moved to Miritituba on the Tapajós River, then downstream to the Amazon, and on to Europe and China.
- New infrastructure plans call for the channelization of the Juruena, Teles Pires and Tapajós rivers, creating a 1,000-mile industrial waterway. Two railways, one over the Andes, are also proposed. These schemes pose grave threats to the Amazon rainforest, biodiversity, indigenous and traditional communities, and even the global climate.
Counterintuitive: Global hydropower boom will add to climate change
- For many years new hydropower dams were assumed to be zero greenhouse gas emitters. Now with 847 large (more than 100 MW) and 2,853 smaller (more than 1 MW) hydropower projects currently planned or under construction around the world, a new global study has shown that dam reservoirs are major greenhouse gas emitters.
- The study looked at the carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O) emitted from 267 reservoirs across six continents. Globally, the researchers estimate that reservoirs contribute 1.3 percent of human-made greenhouse gas emissions, comparable to those from rice paddy cultivation or biomass burning.
- Reservoir emissions are not currently counted within the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN IPCC) emissions assessments, but they should be, argue the researchers. In fact, countries are currently eligible under the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) to receive carbon credits for newly built dams.
- The study raises the question as to whether hydropower should continue to be counted as green power or be eligible for UN CDM carbon credits.
Brazil’s ‘river people’ join forces with indigenous communities, offer alternative to deforestation
- Extractive reserves are important to the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, creating buffer zones of protection from deforestation and the exploitation of natural resources.
- Extractive reserves cover 3.4 million hectares of land in Brazil, nearly all of it in the Amazon.
- Mining, logging and professional hunting are prohibited within the Xingu Resex, but trading posts allow for the exchange of goods gathered from within the reserve.
Giant catfish clocks longest ever freshwater migration
- The dorado catfish uses the massive Amazon River as its roadway, beginning its journey at the river’s headwaters.
- It spawns in the far western Amazon, then drifts thousands of miles towards the estuary in the opposite direction.
- After two to three years in the estuary, the catfish makes its way back towards the headwaters through the Amazon floodplain.
An in-depth look at Mongabay’s collaboration with The Intercept Brasil
- Branford is a regular contributor to Mongabay who has been reporting from Brazil since 1979 when she was with the Financial Times and then the BBC.
- One of the articles in the series resulted in an official investigation by the Brazilian government before it was even published — and the investigators have already recommended possible reparations for an indigenous Amazonian tribe.
- We also round up the top news of the past two weeks.
E.O. Wilson talks about Half-Earth, Trump, and more
- We also welcome back to the Newscast Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett Butler, who will be answering a reader question about the sounds you can hear in the background at the start of every episode.
- Want to write about Central America for Mongabay? Inquire within!
- All that plus the top news on this episode of the Newscast.
Is Brazil green washing hydropower? The case of the Teles Pires dam
- The Teles Pires Hydroelectric Company (builder and operator of Brazil’s Teles Pires dam in the Amazon Basin) was awarded a Green Certificate in the “Responsible Social and Environmental Management” category of the Chico Mendes Award, a prize named after the murdered Brazilian eco-hero.
- The company has won other green awards for its construction projects (including Amazon dams), and been awarded carbon credits by the United Nations.
- But critics ask how green the company that built the Tele Pires dam can be when their project wrecked indigenous and traditional communities, led to the dynamiting of an indigenous sacred site, did harm to biodiversity and fisheries, while also likely producing significant carbon emissions.
- The company claims it is not to blame, because it complied with all government regulations during the dam’s construction, and even went further to make the project sustainable. The Teles Pires dam raises key questions about “sustainability,” and who has the right to define it.
‘Day of Terror’: Munduruku village attacked by Brazil’s Federal Police
- On November 7, 2012, Brazil’s Federal Police launched the Eldorado Operation with a raid aimed at destroying an illegal gold mining barge at Teles Pires, a Munduruku village. During the attack, an Indian was killed by police — “executed,” according to a Federal Public Ministry (MPF) investigation.
- The gold mining barge that was destroyed that day — and others in indigenous territory along the Teles Pires River in the Tapajós Basin — had been allowed to operate illegally by the government for years previously.
- The income earned from the gold mining barges had recently been used to fund indigenous opposition to the Belo Monte mega-dam, and resistance to more than 40 dams proposed for the Tapajós Basin. The extreme violence of the Eldorado Operation has shaken Munduruku trust in Brazil’s government.
- According to the Indians, the police told them to lie about these events, or face persecution. Mongabay’s videotaped eyewitness interviews have resulted in the MPF opening a new investigation into the Eldorado Operation; MPF is seeking US $2.9 million in damages for the Munduruku.
The end of a People: Amazon dam destroys sacred Munduruku “Heaven”
- Four dams are being built on the Teles Pires River — a major tributary of the Tapajós River — to provide Brazil with hydropower, and to possibly be a first step toward constructing an industrial waterway to transport soy and other commodities from Mato Grosso state, in the interior, to the Atlantic coast.
- Those dams are being built largely without consultation with impacted indigenous people, as required by the International Labor Organization’s Convention 169, an agreement which Brazil signed.
- A sacred rapid, known as Sete Quedas, the Munduruku “Heaven”, was dynamited in 2013 to build the Teles Pires dam. A cache of sacred artefacts was also seized by the dam construction consortium and the Brazilian state.
- The Indians see both events as callous attacks on their sacred sites, and say that these desecrations will result in the destruction of the Munduruku as a people — 13,000 Munduruku Indians live in 112 villages, mainly along the upper reaches of the Tapajós River and its tributaries in the heart of the Amazon.
Battle for the Amazon: Tapajós Basin threatened by massive development
- The Brazilian Amazon has systematically been deforested, dammed and developed by the federal government, river basin by river basin. The most recent to be so developed was the Xingu watershed. The next target, where road and dam construction has already begun, is the Tapajós Basin.
- Plans by agribusiness and the government call for the paving of the BR-163 highway (almost complete); the building of a new railroad, nicknamed Ferrogrão or Grainrail (just given approval); and the building of the Teles Pires-Tapajós industrial waterway, requiring dozens of dams, plus canals.
- As Mato Grosso soy plantations creep north deeper into the Tapajós region, agribusiness hopes to benefit from the rapid development of transportation infrastructure that will provide a cheap, fast northern road, rail and water route to the Atlantic for the export of commodities.
- Indigenous groups, traditional river communities, environmentalists and social NGOs oppose the mega-infrastructure projects, which they say will bring deforestation, cultural disruption, and quicken local and global climate change. The conflict is over no less than the fate of the Amazon.
Temer government set to overthrow Brazil’s environmental agenda
- A catastrophic setback to environmental and indigenous protections was narrowly averted last week when quick action from two federal deputies prevented the agricultural lobby from forcing passage of bills to authorize construction of three mega-industrial waterways in the Amazon and elsewhere.
- The Congress will likely pick up the bills again after the recess in February. They would authorize building many dozens of dams and industrial waterways in three river basins — PDC 119/2015 on the Tapajós, Teles Pires and Juruena rivers in the Amazon; PDC 120/2015 on the Tocantins and Araguaia rivers, also in the Amazon; and PDC 118/2015 on the Paraguai River.
- In 2005, a similar bill was passed, fast tracking the Belo Monte dam and bypassing proper environmental evaluation. Today, Norte Energia, the consortium that built the Amazon mega-dam has been charged with environmental crimes, ethnocide and is under investigation for corruption.
- Another bill working its way through the National Congress would completely gut the environmental licensing process for most infrastructure projects, while still another would take away hard won protections guaranteed to Brazil’s indigenous people in the 1988 Constitution.
Resource wars: Brazilian gold miners go up against indigenous people
- Violence in the Brazilian Amazon is on the increase. Last year, Brazil ranked as the most dangerous nation for environmentalists worldwide. Indigenous people are especially at risk, with 137 killings in Brazil reported in 2015.
- One cause of this violence arises from the conflict between indigenous people and small-scale mineral prospectors, especially gold miners, who lay claim to the same lands.
- Lack of government action to demarcate indigenous lands, along with an inadequate federal law enforcement presence in the Amazon, have exacerbated the problem.
- Many worry that violence will escalate if the federal government doesn’t step in to help mediate the claims made by indigenous groups and prospectors. However, some indigenous people see the small-scale prospectors as potential allies in the face of large-scale mining operations moving into the region and as the Tapajós Basin is progressively industrialized.
Brazil’s dispossessed: Belo Monte dam ruinous for indigenous cultures
- Brazil’s Public Federal Ministry (MPF) launched a lawsuit in 2015 accusing Norte Energia, the consortium that built the Belo Monte mega-dam on the Xingu River in Pará state, along with the federal government’s National Indian Foundation (FUNAI) with the crime of ethnocide.
- Indigenous families say that serious harm was done to them when they were uprooted from their riverside homes; forced to give up their sustainable fishing, hunting and farming livelihoods; and compelled to seek jobs in an economically depressed urban environment.
- Tamawaerw Paracana, an indigenous woman, describes the everyday challenges her family faces as they try to survive in an urban resettlement community: “I don’t have the means to live here. I don’t have the money for food. Here you have to have a job.… People who don’t work, can’t eat. There’s no food.” The ethnocide case has yet to go to court.
- “Every day that goes by, there are more dams being built in our country; there are more people affected; and there are more rights violated. So our goal is to organize all the people affected and carry on this fight,” says Edizangela Alves Barros, an indigenous activist.
The media megaphone: does it help curb bad infrastructure projects?
- A tsunami of infrastructure development is putting global ecosystems, wildlife and indigenous people at risk; with 25 million kilometers of new roads planned by 2050, most in the developing world. Add pipelines, hundreds of dams on the Amazon, Mekong and other river systems, with their electricity used often by mega-mining projects.
- As in the past, this tidal wave of construction is being heavily backed by national governments, greatly benefiting industry and international investors, often at the cost of indigenous peoples, rural communities, wildlife and habitat. Government and industry typically have large public relations budgets to promote such projects.
- Many conservationists trying to mitigate the harm of ill-advised projects, or even see them canceled, are relying heavily on the media to achieve their aims. There is precedent for such a strategy: media coverage has historically played a key part in curbing some of the most ambitious of international mega-infrastructure projects.
- As infrastructure development rapidly accelerate, today’s environmentalists are utilizing all the media tools at their disposal — ranging from traditional newspapers and television, to Twitter, Facebook, blogs and YouTube — to shine a light on poorly designed infrastructure projects and inform and engage the public.
Top scientists: Amazon’s Tapajós Dam Complex “a crisis in the making”
- BRAZIL’S GRAND PLAN: Build 40+ dams, new roads and railways at the heart of the Amazon to transport soy from the interior to the coast and foreign markets, turning the Tapajós Basin and its river systems into an industrial waterway, leading to unprecedented deforestation, top researchers say.
- ECOSYSTEM IMPACTS: “The effects would clearly be devastating for the ecology and connectivity of the greater Tapajós Basin,” says William Laurance, of James Cook University, Australia; a leading rainforest ecology scientist. “It is not overstating matters to term this a crisis in the making.”
- HUMAN IMPACTS: The dams would produce “A human rights crisis, driven by the flooding of indigenous territories and forced relocation of indigenous villages… [plus] the loss of fisheries, reduced fertility of fertile floodplains, and polluting of clean water sources,” says Amazon Watch’s Christian Poirier.
- CLIMATE IMPACTS: “The worst-case scenario… over 200,000 square kilometers of deforestation,” says climatologist Carlos Nobre, which would be “very serious” and create “regional climate change.” Tapajós deforestation could even help tip the global scales, as the Amazon ceases being a carbon sink, and becomes a carbon source — with grave consequences for the planet.
Amazon oil spill impacts indigenous villages on Teles Pires River
- An oil spill was detected on November 13th on the Teles Pires River, a tributary of the Tapajós River, in a remote part of the Brazilian Amazon. The spill occurred near the under-construction São Manoel hydropower dam. The spill’s cause or extent is as yet unknown.
- Roughly 320 indigenous people were affected in villages near the dam site. Empresa de Energia São Manoel, the consortium building the dam, has sent more than 4,000 liters of fresh water to affected indigenous communities. IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental agency, is investigating.
- Indigenous leader Taravi Kayabi described the spill’s impact on his community: “All this is a terrible sadness for our people. This region is sacred to us. Now, along with the land being flooded [due to the dam], they´ve dirtied our water. The fish have disappeared, too. People are getting sick with diarrhea. Everyone is worried about their health.”
- The Teles Pires River already has three other dams, which have to date been subject to 24 lawsuits. Most of these cases focused on environmental impacts and violations of indigenous rights. The dams are part of the Tapajós Complex, a gigantic infrastructure project aimed at turning the Tapajós River and its tributaries into an industrial waterway for soy transport.
Environmental official murdered in Brazilian Amazon
- Luiz Alberto Araújo, head of the Altamira municipal government environmental department in the state of Pará, was gunned down in an execution-style killing last Thursday. 448 environmentalists were killed in Brazil between 2002-2013 — half the total murdered worldwide.
- Araújo provided information this year that helped lead to the arrest of a major illegal logging operation led by Antonio José Junqueira Vilela Filho, known as Ajj.
- Ajj ran his operation near Altamira for ten years, often only cutting valuable understory trees, and leaving the tallest behind to fool satellites and avoid detection. His operation kept loggers in slave-like conditions. Ajj was fined US$37 million, the largest such fine ever in the Amazon.
- Last February, Araújo’s team collected tons of dead fish secretly buried near the newly completed Belo Monte mega-dam, near Altamira. Norte Energia, the company operating the dam, was fined US$11 million for the 16.2 tons of fish illegally killed during the flooding of the dam’s reservoir.
Hydropower threatens Bolivian indigenous groups and national park
- Seventeen communities could be affected by the construction of dams in the El Bala and El Beu canyons on the Beni River.
- Madidi National Park would also be affected. The park is home to 3 percent of the world’s higher plant species, 3.75 percent of its vertebrates, and 11 percent of its birds.
- “Flooding it will kill plants, animals, and everything that has life in this region; communities will disappear,” said Domingo Ocampo, leader of one of the indigenous communities that would be affected.
Amazon radio network unites regional opposition to Tapajós basin dams
- The Amazon News Network has been in operation for nearly a decade, with the mission of providing news and information to unify people living all across the Amazon region of Brazil.
- The Network is especially involved in providing news about the massive infrastructure projects planned for the Amazon, including more than 40 dams slated for the Tapajós River basin.
- Late in August 2016, Amazon News Network founder Father Edilberto Sena, and Executive Producer Joelma Viana helped organize an environmental and social caravan that traveled from Santarém to Itaituba in Brazil’s Pará state at the heart of the Amazon. In Itaituba around 1,000 activists and concerned citizens gathered for a summit to develop sustainable economic strategies for the Tapajós region.
- The Itaituba summit called for the reinstatement of the Ministry of Agricultural Development (established in 1999 to oversee land reform in Brazil and promote sustainable practices, but abolished under the new Temer government). The participants also organized around their opposition to Tapajós dam construction plans.
Operation license for Amazon’s Belo Monte mega-dam suspended
- A Brazilian judge has suspended the operating license of the controversial Belo Monte dam in the Amazon because the Norte Energia consortium, the dam’s builder and operator, failed to meet a key compensation commitment required by the federal government.
- In exchange for the right to build and run the dam, Norte Energia originally agreed to install drinking water and sewage systems for the city of Altamira, with completion due in July 2014. The court allowed an extension to September 1, 2016, but the system is still not complete.
- Norte Energia had argued that its commitment only extended to constructing water and sewer lines, not to connecting those lines to residences — a contention which the court has rejected.
- The city currently dumps its sewage directly into the Xingu River, and waste is now building up behind the new dam. If the sanitation system isn’t quickly installed, officials worry that Altamira runs the risk of a collapse in sanitation due to the contamination of the city’s groundwater from domestic sewage.
Belo Monte dam compensation inadequate, say traditional fisherfolk
- The Norte Energia Consortium — the group of companies that built the Belo Monte dam — signed an agreement with the Brazilian government in 2011 to pay US $1 billion to Altamira residents, including indigenous people, in compensation for the impacts of the dam. But traditional fisherfolk complain they have not been adequately compensated.
- The traditional fisherfolk say that the Amazon dam negatively impacted water quality and fish spawning in the Xingu River, and drastically reduced the area in which they could fish. Belo Monte also deprived them of the markets where they sold their fish — communities razed by the dam.
- Belo Monte’s construction also forced them to move from rural villages to a gritty urban resettlement community in the city of Altamira with few amenities. The fisherfolk also no longer live on the river, and so must commute to the waterway to pursue their fishing livelihood.
- Fisherfolk protests resulted in the creation of a new condition for Belo Monte’s operating license at the end of 2015. Norte Energia has been obliged to start a technical assistance project focused on improving fishing conditions on the Xingu River. IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental agency, is also studying the loss of income, along with the loss of identity and traditional practices to draft a compensation plan.
Planned Tapajós industrial waterway a potential environmental disaster
- The recent Brazilian government decision to cancel the São Luiz do Tapajós mega-dam was hailed as a victory by indigenous groups and environmentalists. But a new book describes the serious threats still facing the Tapajós basin.
- Brazil’s Tapajós is one of the most biodiverse and culturally rich regions in Amazonia. But it is also an area being aggressively eyed by agribusiness and the mining industry for extensive infrastructure development — to include a vast industrial waterway and major hydropower projects.
- The book, called Ocekadi (meaning “the river of our place” in the Munduruku indigenous language), includes 25 articles by academic researchers, and offers the most comprehensive analysis yet available of Tapajós environmental and social assets, and the threats facing them.
- Ocekadi is being published in Portuguese by International Rivers and Brazil’s Universidade Federal do Oeste do Pará (UFOPA).
Dams inevitably result in species decline, losses on reservoir islands
- Hydropower is being pushed hard in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe by dam developers who say it is an environmentally friendly form of alternative energy, but a recent study finds an unforeseen environmental impact for dams the world over.
- Islands created by reservoirs are often claimed as wildlife sanctuaries by dam proponents, but the study shows that such islands owe a big “extinction debt”, and see a slow but inexorable extinction of species, along with biodiversity impoverishment, over time.
- The meta-analysis evaluated data from 100 studies of reservoir islands at 15 dams in North, Central and South America, Europe and Asia. In more than 75 percent of cases, dams had an overall negative impact on reservoir island species, affecting species population density, ecological community composition, and species behavior.
- Reservoir islands have often been flaunted for their potential as conservation areas by dam developers. But the researchers recommend that islands no longer be counted as viable habitat or potential conservation areas in future dam proposals.
Promised US$1 billion in Belo Monte dam compensation largely unpaid?
- In a 2011 binding agreement with Brazil’s federal government, the Norte Energia Consortium agreed to pay US$1 billion to Altamira residents, including 9 indigenous groups, in compensation for the Belo Monte dam. Little has been paid to date, says the Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), an NGO watchdog group, while the consortium responds that it is meeting its obligations.
- Belo Monte significantly impacted Altamira’s environment and people, requiring the diversion of 20 kilometers of the Xingu River, reducing the stream’s flow by 80 percent over a 100 kilometer stretch, and dislocating indigenous people and other area residents; 8,000 families were displaced by the dam.
- According to critics, only 15 percent of required compensation to protect indigenous lands has been spent, while Norte Energia has failed to sufficiently secure entry points to indigenous lands, per their agreement, a failure that facilitated the entrance of illegal loggers who cut significant amounts of timber on Indian lands.
- Promised Altamira garbage collection infrastructure has yet to be put in place. While an underground sewage system and water distribution system have both been completed by the consortium, no houses have been connected to the system. Norte Energia argues that it is the city’s responsibility to make the connections.
Olympics to begin amid rising violence against Brazil’s indigenous people
- Indigenous leaders and human rights advocates held a press briefing on August 4, the day before the Olympic Games’ opening ceremony in Rio de Janeiro.
- They highlighted new data showing that 33 indigenous people and 23 environmental activists had been killed in Brazil this year.
- They pointed to government turmoil and the erosion of protections for activists and indigenous communities as factors in the violence.
Environmental licence for São Luiz do Tapajós hydroelectric dam denied
- Ibama, Brazil’s environmental agency has denied an environmental license for the proposed 8,000-megawatt São Luiz do Tapajós dam on the Tapajós River in the Amazon — a decision seen as a victory by the Munduruku Indians and environmentalists.
- The Amazon mega-dam would have required the flooding of Munduruku territory known as the Sawré Muybu — a land claim first recognized by Funai, the federal indigenous affairs agency, in April of this year. The Brazilian constitution forbids such uses of indigenous lands.
- The decision will not likely end controversy in the region. The Brazilian government has major development plans for the Tapajós river basin, including 43 dams on the Tapajós River and its tributaries, ten of which are considered priority, to be completed by 2022.
Tapajós dams may bring fish kills, species loss, mercury contamination
- Brazil plans to construct seven hydroelectric dams on the Tapajós River and its tributaries — a part of the Amazon known for its exceptional aquatic and terrestrial biodiversity. The São Luiz do Tapajós hydropower plant is the largest and first proposed dam.
- An Environmental Impact Study (EIS) commissioned by the federal energy agency Eletrobrás in conjunction with the companies hoping to build the São Luiz do Tapajós dam says the project will cause a quick disappearance of habitat, loss of animals and reduction of their populations. Still, the EIS concludes the dam will cause little environmental impact.
- In an independent analysis of the EIS commissioned by Greenpeace, scientists criticized the methodology and results of the document, noting that it failed to identify or misidentified
- Because so little is known about Tapajós aquatic ecology, there is an urgent need for more studies before building begins, say experts. The hydroelectric project could jeopardize commercial fish species, the pink river dolphin, giant otter and black caiman. One fear is that the reservoir will concentrate dangerous levels of toxic mercury, poisoning fish and people.
Study: Drought impedes tree growth, shuts down Amazon carbon sink
- The Amazon Basin stores 100 billion tons of carbon, serving as a valuable carbon sink and buffer against climate change.
- A new study finds that a major drought in 2010 hindered tree growth and caused sufficient tree death to result in the complete shut down of the Amazon carbon sink.
- That effect was temporary, and in the years between droughts the Amazon returned to being a carbon sink, with growth outstripping mortality.
- Scientists are concerned that as climate change escalates that the intensity of droughts in the Amazon will continue to increase, stalling tree growth and bringing more carbon sink shut downs.
Fish kills at Amazon’s Belo Monte dam point up builder’s failures
- In April, the Norte Energia consortium — builder of the now operational Belo Monte dam — was fined US$10.8 million for the death of 16.2 million tons of fish. Another flurry of fish deaths has occurred since then, and fishermen fear more to come.
- Critics say the dam’s construction has had negative impacts on the Tabuleiro do Embaubal, one of the most important turtle breeding sites in the Amazon basin; 20,000 Giant Amazon River Turtles (Podocnemis expansa) lay their eggs there annually.
- The dam’s builder and scientists agree Belo Monte will drastically curtail the annual floods that force the Xingu River over its banks and into the rainforests, harming aquatic connectivity and likely impacting genetic diversity and ecosystem health. Extreme drought due to climate change adds to that risk.
- Indigenous and traditional fisheries suffered steep declines during the building of the dam, with fishermen and scientists noting the disappearance of important commercial fish species such as the piraíba. Those losses could continue in future.
Amazon turtles imperilled by dams, mercury pollution and illegal trade
- The Brazilian Amazon is home to 17 turtle species, all of which are under pressure from overexploitation, the illegal wildlife trade, widespread hydropower dam construction, and mercury contamination. Deforestation, agricultural development and climate change are other looming threats.
- The Brazilian government’s Amazon Turtle Program focuses its conservation efforts on the Giant Amazon River Turtle (Podocnemis expansa), plus the Yellow-spotted River Turtle (P. unifilis), and Six-tuberculed River Turtle (P. sextuberculata). The Wildlife Conservation Society works with these same species and is also conserving the Red-headed Amazon River Turtle (P. erythrocephala), and Big-headed Amazon River Turtle (Peltocephalus dumerilianus).
- Amazon dams — especially mega-dams like the just built Belo Monte dam and the proposed Luiz do Tapajós dam — alter ecosystems and disrupt the annual flood cycles that inundate lowland Amazon forests, putting turtles and other species at risk.
- Mercury contamination of Amazon rivers due to illegal gold mining is a major threat to turtles. Researchers say there is an urgent need for the Brazilian government to develop and implement guidelines for the assessment of mercury toxicity in Amazon reptiles, especially turtles.
Small time land speculators profit in advance of Amazon dams
- Arlindo de Oliveira used to be a bricklayer for various Amazon dam construction consortiums. Over the years, he befriended company middle management and received inside information on dam site plans.
- For the past eight years, he has made big money as a land speculator, buying property within the flood zone of a proposed dam, then getting compensated for the loss of the land when it is flooded by the hydroelectric project.
- Oliveira lives within doomed riverside communities and lobbies actively for each dam, trying to convince locals its worthwhile to give up their properties. When the dam is built Oliveira moves on to the next big dam project.
- He’s done this four times: on the Madeira River, where the Jirau and Santo Antonio dams were built, on the Xingu River, where the Belo Monte dam was constructed, and now in the path of the proposed São Luiz do Tapajós dam,
Amazonian catfish’s 5,000-mile migration endangered by dams
- Brachyplatystoma rousseauxii, a commercially valuable catfish species and an apex predator, grows to 3 meters long. Scientists have long suspected that it makes an extraordinary migration from the Amazon headwaters to the Amazon Basin and back.
- Now researchers — using an innovative technique that examines the chemical composition of adult catfish ear bones — have found proof of the 8,000-kilometer journey. The fish can drift as far downstream as the Amazon estuary, then swim back to the headwaters stream where they began, or to other Amazon tributaries.
- Unfortunately for the catfish, more than 400 dams have been built, are under construction, or are planned for the Amazon Basin and Andes feeder streams. Global research has shown that long homing migrations by fish are incompatible with dams.
- The researchers are urging governments in six Amazon Basin countries to reconsider and redesign their Amazon dam plans, or risk losing this natural wonder — along with seeing negative impacts to the entire freshwater food chain.
Arara Indians in Brazilian Amazon finally given right to their land
- Before the 1970’s, groups of Arara Indians lived a nomadic life in the Amazon rainforest along the Iriri River and had little contact with the modern industrialized world.
- Brazil’s military government pushed a highway through the heart of Arara territory and invited in settlers from northeastern Brazil who violently colonized what had been the Indians’ homeland.
- The Arara people were decimated by the road and by the invasion, and impacted yet again with the building of the Belo Monte mega-dam.
- This Spring, Brazil established the Indigenous Territory of Cachoeira Seca, covering 733,688 hectares (2,833 square miles) as a safe haven for the remaining Arara to rebuild their lives and culture. But illegal loggers still threaten their existence, and it remains to be seen if the new government of Michel Temer will actively protect the territory.
Dams threaten future of Amazonian biodiversity major new study warns
- An international team of biologists has studied the past and current impacts on biodiversity of 191 existing Amazon dams, and the potential impacts of 246 dams planned or under construction.
- Researchers identified negative interactions between dam construction, mining, industrial agriculture, commerce and transportation, climate change, and human migration that would likely seriously impact biodiversity and ecosystem services.
- Aquatic and terrestrial species that especially rely on fast-flowing river segments for habitat are greatly at risk, because such sites are the most targeted for hydropower projects.
- Solutions that could better protect biodiversity include a move away from mega-dams and other big infrastructure projects toward smaller dams; more careful hydro project siting; more wind and solar projects; and a more rigorous planning process that carefully considers environmental, indigenous, social and financial costs.
Proposed Amazon dam attracts illegal loggers, threatens local farmers
- Dam construction in remote parts of the Amazon is historically proceeded by increased lawlessness as illegal loggers and squatters flock to the project site to cut timber and make land grabs from longtime farmers and other settlers.
- The proposed São Luiz do Tapajós hydropower plant on the Tapajós River has seen a rapid uptick in criminal activity, as loggers and squatters try to force residents from their lands, and make homesteaders take part in illegal logging schemes.
- Federal and state law enforcement is overstretched in the region, with just 60 personnel to cover an area three times the size of Florida. So the homesteaders are poorly protected from threats and violence.
- Rapid development of dams, canals, roads, railways and ports is aimed at turning the Tapajós basin into a major soy and grain transportation hub — a transformation likely to uproot the region’s long time small landholders.
Tapajós dam puts newly discovered species, indigenous people at risk
- The proposed Sao Luiz do Tapajós mega-dam, in the state of Pará, will have a maximum generating capacity of 8,040 megawatts, and if it is ever built, will cost an estimated R$ 23 billion (US$ 5.8 billion).
- The dam’s Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) identified eight mammals new to science and endemic to the region that will be flooded — these include a new monkey, marsupial, rodents and bats.
- The EIA has been deeply criticized by conservationists and scientists, who loudly deny its conclusion that the dam will have no major environmental impacts. Critics also note the urgent need to evaluate not just the impacts of this single dam, but those of at least 6 others to be built in conjunction with it.
- The fate of these new species, their habitat, and the indigenous and river people who rely on them for survival is unknown: Brazil’s economic crisis, president Rousseff’s impeachment, and a new conservative interim government has put infrastructure projects such as dams in limbo — for now.
Keeping Amazon fish connected is key to their conservation
- Amazon basin fish species living in lakes, floodplain forests and river systems need a high degree of connectivity to stay genetically diverse and healthy, but this connectivity is threatened by proposed dams and increased drought due to climate change — both of which threaten rainy season flood cycles.
- A new study finds that understanding the dynamics of Amazon metapopulations —subgroups separated from other subgroups in lakes and river systems, which periodically mix during flood seasons or migrations — is critical to conservation.
- Unless Brazil’s federal government and communities take freshwater conservation seriously — protecting interlinked lake, floodplain and river systems — commercial fisheries, and even forest diversity (due to fish seed dispersal) could be seriously at risk.
Brazil is scaling back its protected area network and the short-term effect on forests might surprise you
- A team led by researchers at the University of Maryland created a comprehensive spatial database and documented all enacted and proposed PADDD events since 1900 to get a sense of how the program was impacting forests.
- They identified 67 enacted PADDD events that affected 112,477 square kilometers (nearly 28 million acres) of land and eliminated 6 percent of Brazil’s total protected areas.
- “Contrary to previous research, we did not find a significant causal effect of enacted PADDD events on short-term deforestation rates,” the authors of the study write. “[R]ather, short-term deforestation rates in PADDDed forests appear correlated with broader patterns of deforestation.”
Brazil’s Congress moves ahead to end nation’s environmental safeguards
- A Brazilian Senate Commission is quickly, and surreptitiously, moving forward a constitutional amendment (PEC 65) that would end the need for environmental assessment approvals for public works projects in Brazil ranging from Amazon dams to roads and canals, and oil infrastructure.
- PEC 65 would devastate Brazil’s environment and indigenous groups, taking away legal protections now guaranteed in the building of new infrastructure projects, say blindsided environmental groups who are mobilizing to stop the amendment’s passage.
- Senator Blairo Maggi, who put forward the amendment, owns companies that produce and export soybeans, and that provide soy sector infrastructure (constructing terminals, highways and waterways).
- Maggi would likely benefit financially from the building of a canal system able to transport soy products from Brazil’s interior along with dams proposed for the Tapajós basin — the first of which, the Sao Luiz do Tapajós dam, saw its environmental license cancelled in April by IBAMA, Brazil’s licensing agency.
Ethics, sustainability, and Amazon hydropower: mission impossible?
- The Inambari dam would have flooded 46,000 hectares and displaced thousands of people in the Peruvian Amazon. It was a project of EGASUR, a consortium led by Eletrobras, a Brazilian firm. The dam met great opposition and was cancelled in 2011.
- Researchers analyzed the Inambari dam Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) commissioned by EGASUR and Eletrobras, and found that the EIA was guided less by the sustainable commitments expressed by the companies than by financial gain.
- The scientists urge the incorporation of similar ethical analyses in large-scale infrastructure projects that have multiple stakeholders, and which can have large impacts on the wellbeing of the environment, communities, nations and the world.
Amazon mega-dam suspended, providing hope for indigenous people and biodiversity
- Of the forty new dams proposed for the Tapajós watershed in the Amazon, the largest would be the São Luiz do Tapajós dam with an 8,040 megawatt generating capacity, which would flood almost 400 square kilometers (154 square miles) and deforest 2,200 square kilometers (849 square miles).
- The vast Tapajós Basin dam complex would be a disaster to Amazon biodiversity, and wreck indigenous and river communities, but likely fail to meet its energy and investor goals due to escalating drought due to climate change, according to environmentalists.
- This Wednesday, IBAMA, the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Resources suspended the São Luiz do Tapajós dam’s license, citing its threat to the Indigenous lands of the Munduruku Indians, a land claim just recently recognized by FUNAI, Brazil’s National Indian Foundation. The decision could still be reversed by the Brazilian government — as has happened with other Amazon dams.
- IBAMA’s decision comes a week after Greenpeace published an extensive report that enumerates the dam’s many threats to wildlife — including turtles, caimans, giant river otters, and Amazon dolphins — and to the lifestyles and livelihoods of indigenous groups and people living along the Tapajós River.
Iriri River families fight to keep their Amazonian homelands
- Brazilian officials are establishing new ecological stations and conserved lands all across the nation, preserves where all human habitation is banned, despite the fact that people may have settled these areas long ago.
- One such place is the 3.4 million hectare ecological station, Estaçāo Ecológica da Terra do Meio (EsecTM) on the Iriri River, where 15 Amazon families settled long before the preserve was created. The government wants to expel the colonos (settlers) and beiradeiros (river people). But their sustainable lifestyles may not only be of benefit to the local forests, but also a boon to the rest of the world.
- Importantly, the river settlers have developed new crops, including drought resistant types of manioc, plus varieties with different dietary properties, that can be harvested throughout the year at different times.
- Some of these new crops are not known to Brazil’s primary agricultural research institute, and could, if cultivated on a large-scale, help feed a hungry world under pressure from climate change and other stressors.
BNDES Speaks Out: giant Brazilian bank offers rare in-depth interview
- Founded in the 1950s, BNDES today is the largest development bank in the Americas. Through the decades, serving both the military dictatorship and elected governments, the bank helped elevate Brazil into the world’s top ten economies.
- BNDES has predominantly focused its energy and investments on massive public works — dams, the power grid, highways, ports, canals, and other infrastructure construction projects, in both Brazil and across South America.
- Criticisms of the bank are many: that it focuses on infrastructure at the expense of the environment, indigenous people and the poor, that it backs huge companies and mega-projects, while smaller programs could do more good for the people of Brazil.
- A common critique is that BNDES lacks transparency, and is unwilling to open a productive dialogue with environmental and social NGOs. Here in a Mongabay exclusive, BNDES offers an in-depth interview, laying out its record and point of view.
Indigenous Brazilians under threat from killings and resource projects: UN Rapporteur
- United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples Victoria Tauli-Corpuz visited Brazil in March.
- In an end-of-mission statement released on March 17, she concluded that indigenous peoples in Brazil are at risk from an alarming uptick in violence as well as from natural-resource development projects that threaten their existence.
- For instance, in 2014, the Catholic Church-affiliated Indigenist Missionary Council documented the killings of 138 indigenous leaders in Brazil, compared to 92 in 2007, according to Tauli-Corpuz. Gunmen opened fire on one indigenous village just hours after Tauli-Corpuz departed.
- Noting the government’s failure to uphold legal protections enshrined in the Brazilian constitution as well as other factors, such as attempts in Congress to weaken legal protections for indigenous rights and the environment, Tauli-Corpuz warned that “The risk of ethnocidal effects in such contexts cannot be overlooked nor underestimated.”
Report from the Amazon #5: Iriri River folk may be forced from their homes to protect the environment they love
- In the early 2000s, the Brazilian government set up a 3.4 million hectare (13,000 square mile) ecological station, the Estaçāo Ecológica da Terra do Meio (EsecTM) along the Iriri River in the Amazon.
- The colonos (settlers) and beiradeiros (river people) already living along the river aren’t part of the plan. So the government wants to expel them, even though the people live sustainably, and in harmony with the land.
- If scientists study the ways of the colonos and beiradeiros, they may discover elements within their simple lifestyles that could not only aid people living across Amazonia, but tropical farmers around the world.
- For example, the scientific team was fascinated by terra preta, rich black earth laid down by indigenous people long ago. It stays fertile, without enrichment, a valued trait where most tropical soils are thin and infertile.
Amazon journalist endures, despite decades of threats and harassment
- Since 1987 Lúcio Flávio Pinto has published his own one-man bimonthly newspaper in the Brazilian state of Pará, Jornal Pessoal.
- His independent coverage of the plunder of the Amazon, shady dealings by prominent families, and government corruption earned him national and international accolades over the years, as well as many prominent enemies.
- Pinto has continued his work in spite of numerous death threats, a beating, and dozens of lawsuits that have left him in precarious circumstances.
BNDES: a bank loans billions to tame South America’s wild waters
- BNDES is funding Brazilian construction companies to build large Amazon basin hydroelectric projects. Critics argue these dams lack sufficient safeguards for the environment, local people and indigenous groups.
- More controversial are the bank’s loans for international projects, part of a grand scheme known as IIRSA (Integration of the Regional Infrastructure of South America). Nearly 600 projects are under the IIRSA umbrella.
- IIRSA is exploiting remote natural resources by linking them into the global economy via a vast energy, transportation and communication grid — a plan some say is aimed at making Brazil a major regional power.
- BNDES is a key IIRSA funder and has made massive loans to Brazilian construction firms for international projects that some say could do irreparable harm to the continent’s biodiversity.
Report from the Amazon #4: Indigenous and non-indigenous cultures, once hostile to each other, now mingle
- A small team of fact-finding researchers heads up the Iriri River, stopping at the village of Tukaya in time to enjoy a festival with the Xipaya Indians and their non-indigenous neighbors, the beiradeiros (river people).
- The two cultures, which once loathed each other, are experiencing a slow, contradictory, mixing of traditions. Older Indians sometimes deny and downplay their indigenous heritage, while younger ones embrace and celebrate it. Of course, the younger Indians have also wholeheartedly adopted some modern conveniences, like disposable diapers.
- Likewise the beiradeiros: they once enjoyed more privileges than the much abused Indians, but now complain that those living in the federally declared indigenous reserves have more advantages than their riverine counterparts. The day ends symbolically with a festival, as Indians and river people — antagonists long ago — join together in a community dance.
BNDES funded Belo Monte dam — a mega-project with mega-problems
- Massive BNDES infusions of cash have made, and are making, gigantic hydroelectric projects and other major infrastructure possible in the Amazon Basin of Brazil, and in the Andes Amazon of Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia.
- However, mounting evidence shows that some of these projects, while incredibly lucrative for the Brazilian companies that construct them, may be financially, environmentally and socially unsound.
- A case in point is the just completed Belo Monte dam, a huge hydroelectric power station on the Xingu River, a major Amazon tributary. Belo Monte received one of the largest loans in BNDES history, but much about the project, from the way it was conceived to its implementation, to its environmental and social impacts, has been controversial — and critics say that the dam could end up being Brazil’s biggest BNDES-funded boondoggle.
BNDES has long history of loans to gigantic construction companies
- Billions in BNDES loans fuelled the meteoric rise of the Four Sisters — a quartet of mega-construction companies that have dominated Brazilian politics for decades. These companies have been implicated in bribery, kickbacks, rigged bids, inflated contracts, social and environmental harm. This overwhelming Brazilian corruption led to a protest on March 13, 2016 in which more than a million people took to the street around the nation.
- As the development bank experienced rapid growth, so too did the Four Sisters, into which it poured low interest subsidized loans for gigantic infrastructure projects both in Brazil and across South America — including Amazon dams, roads, railways, ports and more.
- The Four Sisters — Odebrecht, OAS, Camargo Corrêa and Andrade Gutierrez — have long been accused of financial crimes, with former Odebrecht CEO Marcelo Odebrecht sentenced to 19-years for corruption last week. BNDES, though it has loaned billions to the firms, has not been charged with any offenses.
Giant development bank’s social and environmental safeguards called into question by critics
- After a period of rapid growth, Brazil’s BNDES is today the largest development bank in the Americas. It has poured billions of dollars into big infrastructure projects, including immense hydroelectric dams across the Amazon basin, seen by many critics and indigenous groups as causing great harm to local riverine communities and the environment.
- From 2003-2011, President Lula da Silva used BNDES to make large loans to “Brazilian champions,” big companies such as the Four Sisters (a quartet of giant Brazilian construction firms), and Petrobrás (the state-run oil company). Those firms developed close ties with political parties, setting the stage for the now ongoing Lava Jato (Car Wash) corruption scandal.
- In recent weeks, former president Lula was detained by police over possible bribes and kickbacks channeled through inflated Petrobrás contracts, while the CEO of Odebrecht SA, Latin America’s largest construction firm, was given a 19-year sentence for bribery and money laundering. BNDES has loaned billions to Odebrecht, Petrobrás and other firms accused of wrongdoing, but investigators have made no accusations against the bank. Recently, BNDES responded to critics, making positive changes to improve transparency and responsiveness.
Report from the Amazon #1: Altamira, a city transformed by the Belo Monte dam
- In January 2016, journalist Sue Branford travelled to Brazil to report for Mongabay on how plans for new Amazon basin dams are impacting local people and the environment
- Her first stop was Altamira on the Xingu River, a staging area for the controversial Belo Monte hydroelectric project now nearing completion. Long time residents lament the loss of the forests and grittiness of the town.
- In Altamira, Branford joins a small research team for a trip to the Terra do Meio, one of the Amazon’s most remote areas. This is the first of six reports from her trip.
Chinese dam builder eyeing major Amazon mega-dam contract
- China Three Gorges is a state-owned company preparing to make a bid on the 8,040 megawatt São Luiz de Tapajós hydropower plant in the Amazon’s Tapajós Basin. The company has a track record of human rights violations.
- The seven major planned Tapajós Basin dams wouldn’t just supply electricity. They could also reduce the cost of food exports from Brazil to China via the Tapajós-Teles Pires waterway by linking remote industrial farms in Mato Grosso state with the Amazon River, the seaport of Belem, and the proposed Nicaraguan Canal, which China plans to build in order to shorten shipping distances to Asia.
- Chinese companies are increasingly involved in Brazil’s effort to rapidly expand Amazon infrastructure, including dams, transmission lines, canals, roads, and port projects to open the forested interior to exploitation. The poor social and environmental record of both China and Brazil doesn’t bode well for the region’s indigenous people, ecosystems and wildlife, say critics.
Munduruku building new alliances to fight Tapajós Basin dams in Amazon
- The Munduruku people are utilizing lessons learned in their failed fight against the Belo Monte dam on the Xingu River to battle newly proposed Tapajós Basin hydroelectric projects. Most significantly, they’ve learned there is strength in unity.
- The indigenous group has made a major appeal to the Brazilian government in opposition to the Tapajós dams, and also presented its case to the international environmental community at the Paris Climate Summit in December, 2015.
- The Munduruku are building strong partnerships with other indigenous groups, the quilombola (Amazonian descendants of fugitive slaves), impacted riverine communities, sympathetic city-dwellers, and environmental organizations.
Imperiled Amazon freshwater ecosystems urgently need basin-wide study, management
- Intricately interconnected freshwater ecosystems cover vast areas of the Amazon basin, supporting biodiversity, maintaining water quality, regulating climate, and providing food and fiber.
- A new study examines the combined impacts of dam-building, mining, land-cover change and climate change on the connectivity of freshwater ecosystems, and warns that widespread degradation is occurring because current policy is conducted piecemeal, and protected areas are insufficient.
- The study scientists call for an Amazon basin-wide approach to data collection, research and policy to ensure the conservation of freshwater ecosystems. A key to this sea change is heightened public awareness.
Brazilian court suspends operating license for Belo Monte dam
- The Belo Monte dam — the third largest in the world — is ready to begin generating electricity, but a federal judge has suspended the dam’s operating license.
- Judge Maria Carolina Valente do Carmo has decided that promises made to indigenous groups in 2010 by Norte Energia, the dam’s construction consortium, and the Brazilian government must be fulfilled before operation can begin.
- The government and company were fined R$900,000 (US$225,000) for non-compliance with a requirement to reorganize the regional office of Funai — a provision of the Belo Monte project’s preliminary license.
Forest loss increased annually for 25 years at oldest Amazon mega-dam
- More than 400 Amazon dams are already in operation, under construction or proposed — many of them immense mega-dams. If all were built, they could make a significant contribution to Amazon deforestation.
- A new study finds that from 1988-2008, an 80,000 square kilometer study area around Brazil’s Tucuruí dam lost an average of 591-660 square kilometers of forest annually, a figure that dropped from 2008-2013 to 325 square kilometers per year.
- In a separate study, scientists found that wholesale deforestation of the Amazon could reduce region-wide rainfall, which would significantly decrease river flows and hydroelectric generating capacity, a reality that dam planners have yet to take into account, meaning that many planned dam energy estimates are likely too high.
Corruption guided award of huge Amazon dam contracts in Brazil
- The Lava Jato (Car Wash) scandal has rocked Brazil and its presidency. Beginning with the state-run oil giant Petrobrás, the corruption scandal has now rippled out to include the nation’s gigantic BNDES-funded construction companies who are building large dams in the Amazon.
- The Lava Jato investigation team is particularly focusing on the huge Belo Monte dam on the Xingu River, where massive cost overruns, and claims of ethnocide and significant environmental damage have been made.
- Critics allege that Brazil’s energy planning, and BNDES funding of dams, is focused on awarding large contracts to big construction companies rather than on the public good, with near total disregard for the dams’ economic viability, environmental impacts and indigenous harm in the Amazon.
Scientists sound alarm over hydropower’s impacts on tropical fish biodiversity
- As many as 450 new hydroelectric dams are already planned or in construction on the Amazon, Congo, and Mekong rivers.
- Without more careful assessment and holistic planning at the river basin level, the authors of the Science article say, species extinction and basin-wide declines in fisheries will accompany these new hydropower projects.
- Past research has shown that the carbon emissions from hydroelectric dams greatly exceeds official estimates, yet hydropower is often touted as “sustainable” development.
Wildlife catastrophe at Amazon dam a warning for future Tapajós dams
- There’s a wealth of evidence from around the world that tropical hydroelectric dams and their gigantic reservoirs do tremendous harm to aquatic and terrestrial biodiversity.
- 43 large dams are planned for the Amazon’s Tapajós River Basin, with hundreds more being considered for the rest of the Amazon. A study of the 30-year-old Balbina dam found that biodiversity plummeted after it was built.
- The challenge in the Amazon, with the recent onslaught of so many new dam projects, is to gather baseline wildlife data, study potential habitat impacts, and find solutions to be included in project designs to protect animals — a near impossibility when governments, like that of Brazil, act in secrecy and largely fail to work with researchers.
Damming the Amazon: new hydropower projects put river dolphins at risk
- A new study finds that as many as 26 dams could put the charismatic Amazon River Dolphin and the freshwater Tucuxi Dolphin at risk.
- The research looked at whether particular Amazon dam projects would fragment dolphin populations and affect prey populations.
- Though the public is fascinated by the Amazon’s dolphins, no one knows how many are currently left in the wild, or how the dam building frenzy will impact their numbers.
Brazilian environmental NGOs depend heavily on corporate money
- Is it a conflict-of-interest for environmental NGOs — which, in principle, fight for the preservation of nature — to receive contributions from mining companies, which by their very nature, can cause negative impacts on the environment?
- Between 2009 and 2014 Fundo Vale invested more than $30 million in environmental projects by 25 organizations in seven Amazonian states throughout Brazil.
- Environmental NGOs in Brazil should now focus on helping prevent new disasters, since there’s a risk of other Samarco dams breaking, says one observer.
Belo Monte dam denied operating license by Brazilian regulators
- Belo Monte dam is the third-largest hydroelectric project in the world.
- As many as 20,000 people would be displaced if the dam’s reservoir was filled.
- The owners of the dam insist this is a minor delay, but environmentalists say it could be a much more significant setback.
400+ dams could irrevocably harm Amazon ecology — but solutions exist
- New dams will reduce the ability of fish, river dolphins and other species to move freely up and down Amazon streams, harming ecosystems and riverine economies.
- New dams will reduce the ability of fish, river dolphins and other species to move freely up and down Amazon streams, harming ecosystems and riverine economies.
- Solutions include increased baseline ecological research, improved fishway design, a multi-country approach to project design that involves dam funders, and a shift to alternative energy sources such as solar, wind and biofuels.
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