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Belo Monte: no more dictatorship

ABONG  – Associação Brasileira de ONGs

The town of Belo Monte is located near the Xingu River, in the state of Pará, in the heart of the Amazon jungle near the town of Altamira. It is there in the Xingu basin where fish biodiversity is a great as that of all Europe, which the Brazilian government - taking the name of the town - intends to build one of the largest hydroelectric dams in the world. This project is from the period of the military dictatorship, dating from the 70s. It originally called for the construction of five plants in the region.

Since then, the indigenous peoples, riverine communities, the population of the region, environmentalists and the local church have been fighting against this project. In 1989, the indigenous peoples held the "First Meeting of Indigenous Nations of the Xingu", which had national and international repercussions. Shortly after this meeting, the World Bank denied the financial support and the project was shelved. But it was not abandoned. Now, through the initiative of the Lula government, it returns full force, as part of the PAC projects. To calm the resistance to the project, the government reduced the proposal from five to a single plant.

The government says it will generate 11,233 megawatts. However, it is known that this power will only be produced only during a four month period, the rest of the year the maximum that will be obtained is 4000 MW, in other words, one third of what is reported. The volume of earth to be removed to form the channels will be as great as that excavated for the construction of the Panama Canal! Thousands of people from the municipalities of Altamira, Vitória do Xingu and Brasil Novo will be forcibly removed from their land, becoming poorer. One third of the city of Altamira will be submerged. The investigators said that the construction of one plant is just one step: the project would be financially deficient if it were limited to a single plant. With approval and initiation of the first, the design of the other four will necessarily follow.

Multiple profound impacts to flora and fauna will be caused; compromised will be navigability, fishing, agriculture; animals will be driven to extinction and the local ways of life will be definitively lost; large areas of forest will be inundated. One hundred kilometers of the Xingu River, a tributary of the Amazon - with wide strong rapids and waterfalls, islands, forests and a natural rocky channel – will become dry or be reduced to a trickle! And this, immediately following the Copenhagen Conference on the seriousness of environmental issues in today’s world.

In order to approve this project, the government is riding roughshod over a number of requirements: of 27 public hearings required, only 4 have been conducted and even then, the primary stakeholders - the indigenous people, either did not have access or experienced restricted access. The Public Prosecutor of Pará denounced this fact. In order for IBAMA to grant the environmental license, there was pressure on its employees: two of them left the agency at the end of last year as a result. The Ministry of Mines and Energy (Edson Lobao) and the Ministry of Environment (Carlos Minc) pressured for release of the environmental license four months early. And so it was. Not satisfied with this authoritarian procedure, the Office of the Federal Attorney (AGU), shortly after the granting of the license, released a report - supported by the President - threatening to sue the members of the Public Prosecutor that may call into question the license granted or the project itself.

The media observed that this position of the AGU is unprecedented. It is indeed a return to practices of dictatorship: that was how the military built their great works, its major projects (inundation of the Sete Quedes cataracts, the construction of the Tucuruí dam complex and many others, the Transamazonian highway, the Angra Reis nuclear plant, the "Brazil Power", "Brazil, love it or leave it "...). It bulldozed society, indigenous peoples - who must not be a hindrance to "progress" -, the riverine communities, those affected by dams, respect for the environment.

Brazil ceased being a dictatorship 25 years ago and, in a democratic regime, society has the right to demonstrate and to protest when it realizes that government projects will bring harm to the population. The dictatorship was ended and thanks to the mobilization of the entire civil society, social movements, the human rights organizations, the churches, a constitution was constructed that restored democratic freedoms, expanded the instruments of social participation and defense of society against abuses of power. One of these instruments of defense created by the Constitution was the Public Prosecutor (Ministério Público). This institution must have absolute freedom of action: to pose threats to their work is to revisit behaviors on which we do not remain silent. Do not bypass the Citizen Constitution: dictatorship, never again!

The main objective of the energy that is to be generated in Belo Monte is to meet the needs of large companies already installed or that will move into the region or its vicinity; what matters are the financial results for the private contractors, for the state (whether Odebrecht , Camargo Correa, Andrade Gutierrez, Chefs, Furnas, Eletronorte, Eletrosul) and for the banks. There has been, initially, a cost of 6.7 billion, now there is talk of 30 billion. According to the researcher Oswaldo Seva, it is "an absurd project, [which] was imagined by people who think only about money." A number of researchers insist that there are many alternatives to generate electricity in Brazil without destroying the environment without harming the people (in particular, the indigenous peoples), in a clean and more intelligent manner. Among other things, they show that it is unwise to build a plant in the Amazon and then having to build huge networks of transmission lines to bring that energy to other regions. After having reviewed the entire production and distribution of energy already existing in Brazil, which would save a lot more energy than Belo Monte can produce, the Brazilian government should focus on investment in alternative energy plants, yes, but that are small — never large - wind – which has been demonstrated capable of producing ten times more energy than Itaipu - solar energy (which the Brazilian authorities could develop, if they had the interest). The ABONG in solidarity with those affected by the Belo Monte Hydroelectric Plant project, and all hydroelectric projects implemented or planned in the Amazon (nearly 400), denounces the environmental degradation that will be caused if this project is carried forward and vehemently repudiates the decision of the Lula government, which has the stain of shame for those who believed that the promised hope of better days would be returned to those who in fact, are in need of a life of dignity.

São Paulo, 05 February 2010.