Jun 02 2011
Brazil and Chile Dam Projects Generate Widespread Protests
A Brazilian environmental agency yesterday gave final approval for the hotly contested Belo Monte hydroelectric dam project. Once completed, the Belo Monte dam will generate about 11% of Brazil’s current energy needs. It will be the world’s third largest dam at 3.75 miles long, and, if construction begins soon, will be completed in 2015. Belo Monte has been in the works for 30 years but has been stalled repeatedly by opposition. Indigenous groups and environmental and human rights activists maintain the project will cause catastrophic harm to the Amazon rain forest and tribes living within it. Over the estimated 8 years of construction heavy machinery and thousands of workers will be introduced to sensitive forest areas. The Guardian reports that 30,000 indigenous people will be displaced by the dam, and 62 miles of the Xingu river will go partially dry. Meanwhile in Chile, a proposed hydroelectric dam project there has been the target of protests for months. On May 21st in the nation’s capitol, Santiago, 20,000 Chileans rallied against the Hidro Aysen project. Comprised of five dams, the Hidro Aysen would flood an estimated 14,000 acres of farmland and forests. It would require a 1,500 mile transmission line corridor to be cut through rainforest and other protected lands.
GUEST: Aviva Imhof, Interim Executive Director of International Rivers, an organization founded, “To protect rivers and defend the rights of communities that depend on them.”
Find out more at www.internationalrivers.org.
One Response to “Brazil and Chile Dam Projects Generate Widespread Protests”
The World Bank estimates that forcible “development-induced displacement and resettlement” now affects 10 million people per year. According to the World Bank an estimated 33 million people have been displaced by development projects such as dams, urban development and irrigation canals in India alone.
India is well ahead in this respect. A country with as many as over 3600 large dams within its belt can never be the exceptional case regarding displacement. The number of development induced displacement is higher than the conflict induced displacement in India. According to Bogumil Terminski an estimated more than 10 million people have been displaced by development each year.
Athough the exact number of development-induced displaced people (DIDPs) is difficult to know, estimates are that in the last decade 90–100 million people have been displaced by urban, irrigation and power projects alone, with the number of people displaced by urban development becoming greater than those displaced by large infrastructure projects (such as dams). DIDPs outnumber refugees, with the added problem that their plight is often more concealed.
This is what experts have termed “development-induced displacement.” According to Michael Cernea, a World Bank analyst, the causes of development-induced displacement include water supply (dams, reservoirs, irrigation); urban infrastructure; transportation (roads, highways, canals); energy (mining, power plants, oil exploration and extraction, pipelines); agricultural expansion; parks and forest reserves; and population redistribution schemes.