The Belo Monte Dam: Greatest "Natural" Disaster of Our Generation?

Berkeley Scientific: the journal of young scientists

article

Shane Puthuparambil

关键词: belo monte;    dam;    natural disaster;    brazil;    xingu;    ornamental fisherman;    biodiversity;   

DOI  :  10.5070/BS3231042195

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: University of California, Berkeley

【 摘 要 】

In 1989, in the Brazilian town of Altamira,a Kayapo woman spoke passionately to agathering that had been arranged by variousinternational nonprofits. “We don’t needelectricity; electricity won’t give us food,” shesaid. “We need the rivers to flow freely—ourfutures depend on them. We need our foreststo hunt and gather in. Don’t talk to us aboutrelieving our ‘poverty’—we are the richestpeople in Brazil. We are Indians.”1Strong-willed and emotional, the Kayapowoman's voice reverberated throughoutthe international community.1,2 Protestingthe Brazilian government’s plans for severalhydroelectric projects on the Xingu River,the Kayapo (and other tribes) had forcedthe World Bank to scrap the loans for thedams and pushed back the building plans fornearly two decades. However, in 2011, theBrazilian environmental ministry (IBAMA)granted licenses to Norte Energia—aBrazilian construction consortium—to startconstruction on a new project. Today, theworld’s fourth largest hydroelectric project,known as the Belo Monte Dam, is nearlycomplete, and the social and environmentalconcerns of the past are now the nauseatingrealties of the present.

【 授权许可】

Unknown