Brazil hydroelectric dam

Munduruku native individuals as well as other communities from the Tapajós lake area, whoever land reaches threat from planned hydroelectric projects. Photograph: Gabriel Bicho/Greenpeace

Construction of 40 significant dams in the Brazilian Amazon would destroy the center of the world’s biggest rainforest, severely affect native individuals and it is maybe not financially justifiable, says Greenpeace in an important new report.

The five large dams and 35 other people in the pipeline the Tapajós lake and its own tributaries south of Santarém have now been marketed because of the government and international engineering and energy organizations as an answer to Brazil’s recession and serious electrical energy shortages.

The tasks form part of Brazil’s plans to install 25GW of the latest hydropower ability by 2024 and create a huge manufacturing waterway to permit soya and other crops is shipped more easily to European countries.

But Greenpeace concerns the official forecasts of how much energy should be produced and states Brazil’s dash for hydropower regarding the Tapajós is a possibly devastating ecological and financial error.

In addition to flooding a huge selection of square kilometers of pristine woodland, the dams will trigger uncontrolled economic exploitation, huge deforestation and colonisation associated with broader Amazon basin with damaging ecological effects, it claims.

“There are other less harmful approaches to create just as much power as nation requires, methods that can be brought into operation more quickly than hydropower. It is very skeptical whether hydropower is a trusted or economical method, making an electricity future according to dams a potentially disastrous error, ” says the report.

Greenpeace states it promises to utilize the Munduruku indigenous individuals whoever places is drowned by the 8, 000-megawatt São Luiz do Tapajós (SLT) dam. If built, this would be the sixth-largest hydroelectric dam on earth. The dam will be 7.6km large and flood a huge selection of square kilometres of rainforest.

Programs for the dam are on hold after Brazil’s ecological agency, Ibama, suspended the licensing procedure over issues about its affect the native neighborhood in the area.

“The Munduruku folks have been battling for the Brazilian federal government to officially acknowledge their particular land for many years. Greenpeace have actually sent activists into the Munduruku villages to aid in actually demarcating their land and setting up solar power methods, and campaigning internationally to get their cause, ” states the report.

“This is a vital struggle not only for the Munduruku men and women, however for everybody around the world since we're referring to one of the greatest forests that remain in the world, ” stated Juarez, the Munduruku main associated with the Sawré Muybu indigenous land.

The SLT dam is a high concern the federal government as it is designed to switch the huge Tapajós river into an industrial waterway and shipping hub aided by the aim of permitting soya beans manufactured in the Mato Grosso become transported toward Atlantic ocean as well as on to European countries and United States.

The Munduruku and three various other indigenous teams in Tapajós basin have questioned the legality of dams and just last year declared the federal government incapable of conserving biodiversity.

“It will not look for to comprehend the effects of this destruction of nature and our lives, ” it says.

Greenpeace is phoning the Tapajós is protected and demanding that organizations will not play any part in the dams’ building. Brazilian, United States, European – including British – and Chinese manufacturing companies and banking institutions have all prepared bids for the SLT dam.

A titi monkey (genus Callicebus) in Sawré Muybu, residence into native Munduruku men and women. Photograph: Valdemir Cunha/Greenpeace

“recently the government’s method of the Amazon has grown to become among development whatever it takes and sometimes with dubious justification, ” claims the Greenpeace report.

“It is time the Brazilian government admitted that clean Amazon hydropower is a dangerous misconception that sows distress and destruction while failing continually to provide energy safety. The business economics of huge dam systems in remote tropical rainforests never compare, ” it concludes.

If built, the dams from the Tapajós would overflow an area how big higher London, Paris and Amsterdam blended. The government’s own environmental influence research revealed eight new species of mammal living in the area under risk, including a unique monkey and five types of bat.