$11B Amazon rainforest dam gets initial approval
mongabay.com
July 10, 2007
The Brazilian government has given preliminary go-ahead on a massive Amazon dam project that environmentalists and scientists say could be a potential ecological disaster.
The approval from Ibama, Brazil's environmental protection agency, means that construction firms can begin bidding on the US$10 billion-US$14.7 billion project, though other permits are still needed before building commences, according to a report from the Associated Press.
The government hopes to complete the Santo Antonio and Jirau dams on the Madeira River, the longest tributary of the Amazon by 2012. The dams are expected to have the capacity to produce 6,450 megawatts of electricity, about 8 percent of Brazil's demand.
Balbina dam outside Manaus, Brazil
The Balbina dam flooded some 2,400 square kilometers (920 square miles) of rainforest when it was completed. Phillip Fearnside, a leading expert on the Amazon, calculated that in the first three years of its existence, the Balbina Reservoir emitted 23,750,000 tons of carbon dioxide and 140,000 tons of methane, both potent greenhouse gases which contribute to global climate change.
Scientists say the dams, which will flood 204 square miles, will release greenhouse gases from rotting vegetation and block important route for migratory fish, including some of the river's largest catfish species. Environmentalists have warned that the project could bring soybean farmers, illegal gold miners and loggers to remote parts of the Amazon rainforest, increasing pressure on the biodiverse ecosystem.
"According to IIRSA [Initiative for the Integration of South American Infrastructure, the plan for 335 large-scale infrastructure
projects being proposed by the governments of South America], the project could increase the area cultivated in soy by seven million hectares (27,000 square miles) in the Brazilian rainforest and savannas and affect a similar-sized area in Bolivia," reports the International Rivers Network.
Research suggest the effects of the dam may be greater than projected by the government. Philip Fearnside, a researcher with the National Institute for Amazon Research (INPA) and one of the world's foremost experts on the Amazon, has found that sediment accumulation in the reservoir could affect the dam's economic viability, while flooding from the Jirau dam could extend into Bolivia, further than claimed by the Brazilian government.
"The project aims to transform the entire western Amazon, but the government is treating it as if it had only local impacts," said Roberto Smeraldi of Friends of the Earth, Amazonia.
"The dams won't cause problems only for us, but for all Brazilians who live off the fish from this river," Amazon Watch writer Zachary Hurwitz quoted Domingos Parintintin, leader of the 400 remaining Parintintin, indigenous people who live in the Madeira river basin in southern Amazônia, as saying.
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