Half a million people sign petition against Belo Monte, Brazilian mega-dam

(Two articles)

http://news.mongabay.com/2011/0208-hance_belomonte.html

Half a million people sign petition against Belo Monte, Brazilian mega-
dam
Jeremy Hance
mongabay.com
February 08, 2011

In a protest today in Brasilia, Brazil, indigenous people delivered a
petition to authorities signed by 500,000 people calling on them to
cancel the controversial Belo Monte dam. They hope the petition,
organized by online activist group Avaaz, will help convince Brazil's
new president, Dilma Rousseff, to cancel the project. However, actions
by Brazil's first female president have pushed the dam forward.

Two weeks after the new government came to power, the head of Brazil's
environment agency, IBAMA, stepped down, reportedly under pressure to
approve the dam despite environmental concerns. Last week IBAMA
granted partial licensure to the project, allowing the first phase of
construction�clearing rainforest�to go ahead. However, such a partial
licensure is unheard of in Brazil. The biggest financial backer of the
dam, The Brazilian National Development Bank (BNDES), has pulled back,
stating it won't release a promised loan until 40 environmental and
social conditions are met and the full licensure is granted.

"This is a life and death struggle," said Sheyla Juruna, one of the
delegates who met with the Office of the President during the protest.
"By pushing forward with this dam, the Dilma government is trampling
on our rights. This is not just about defending the Xingu River, it's
about the health of the Amazon rainforest and our planet."

Critics of the massive dam project contend that 50,000 indigenous
people will lose their livelihoods and at least 12,000 will have to be
relocated from the Xingu River. Environmentalists say the dam will
release massive amounts of the potent greenhouse gas methane due to
rotting vegetation and disrupt fish migrations. In addition, the dam
will flood over 100,000 acres of primary rainforest.

The Brazilian government, however, has stated it needs the 11-17
billion dollar dam to power the increasing energy demands of its
growing economy.

The dam will provide enough energy to power 23 million homes, yet
during three to four months of the year it will run on only 10-30%
capacity due to low waters.

http://www.internationalrivers.org/en/node/6188

Dilma Faces Questions of Democracy as Half a Million Ask for Belo
Monte Cancellation
Tue, 02/08/2011 - 12:05pm
By:
Zachary Hurwitz

Over 600,000 people signed a global petition that was handed to
Brazil's president Dilma Rousseff and major members of her cabinet
this morning in Brasilia, asking for the immediate cancellation of the
Belo Monte Dam. The petition is a sign that, after a month in power,
Brazil's new president Dilma Rousseff must respond to allegations of
authoritarian approval of dam projects, spurring comparisons with the
era of top-down dam-building during Brazil's military dictatorship.

Proposals for greater democracy in hydroelectric planning and
alternatives to Brazil's energy matrix were presented along with the
signatures by the Alliance in Defense of the Rivers of the Amazon, led
by indigenous and dam-affected people who traveled to Brasilia to face
her directly. The delegation was supported by the Movement of Dam
Affected People and the Movimento Xingu Vivo Para Sempre, and had the
backing of a protest that marched from the Brazilian Congress straight
to the Palacio do Planalto (the Presidential Palace).

In their proposal, the Alliance called for President Dilma to
democratize energy planning by making it fully transparent and
participatory, and by opening a dialogue between government planners
at the Ministry of Mines and Energy and civil society organizations,
social movement representatives, and the academic community.

Indeed, in recent days, information has surfaced that illustrates
serious structural problems in the ways in which the government plans
and approves hydroelectric dams. Contradicting Brazil's own
Constitution-- which decrees a three-step licensing process that every
development project must follow-- the government forced IBAMA to grant
a so-called "partial license" to begin construction of the Belo Monte
Dam in anticipation of the fast-approaching rainy season on the Xingu
river. The illegal partial license sparked a lawsuit from the Federal
Public Prosecutor-- the dam's 11th-- and came only weeks after former
President of IBAMA Abelardo Bayma Azevedo resigned, unwilling to pull
the trigger on the partial license out of fear of inevitable legal
action.

In an illustration of just how undemocratic the hydro industry is in
Brazil, Belo Monte consortium Norte Energia, S.A. (NESA) backed out of
a bridge loan to begin construction because they sought to avoid
meeting the project's 40 social and environmental conditions, a
prerequisite to obtaining the full installation license. In a
noteworthy exercise of restraint, Brazilian National Development Bank
BNDES tied the disbursement of the bridge loan to the complete
fulfillment of the project's conditions, as required by law. In its
terms of reference, BNDES stated that any "intervention" in the
construction site by NESA without it first obtaining a complete
installation license would trigger the cancellation of the bridge loan.

Similarly, Brazil's Federal Council of Attorneys issued a statement
calling for the paralysis of the Belo Monte Dam until the project's 40
social and environmental conditions have been met by NESA.

However, the problems in hydroelectric planning in Brazil go well
beyond whether or not the prerequisites of an installation license
have been fulfilled. In an interview with Brazil's Minister of
Development, economist Miriam Leit�o criticized the structural lack of
democracy and transparency with which the Belo Monte Dam was approved;
not only at IBAMA, but also at BNDES. The bank still refuses to make
public their methods of evaluating the financial risks of the project,
nor the minutes of decisions over how funds reserved for the public
debt were to be used to bankroll the dam. At the heart of the matter
is a lack of transparency and participation in decision-making across
Brazilian institutions.

The undemocratic processes by which hydroelectric dams are planned and
approved for the Brazilian Amazon needs to change urgently-- starting
with the Belo Monte Dam. According to the Alliance in Defense of the
Rivers of the Amazon, anything less than the "definitive cancellation
of the Belo Monte Complex, considering its social, environmental, and
economic inviability" would present the Brazilian government with the
risk of "an explosive social situation stemming from the imminent
start of construction."
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