{"id":15651,"date":"2011-11-14T12:00:49","date_gmt":"2011-11-14T12:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=15651"},"modified":"2011-11-10T17:05:03","modified_gmt":"2011-11-10T17:05:03","slug":"brazil-court-approves-building-of-amazon-dam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2011\/11\/brazil-court-approves-building-of-amazon-dam\/","title":{"rendered":"Brazil Court Approves Building of Amazon Dam"},"content":{"rendered":"

Contentious Belo Monte dam project in the north to proceed without additional consulation with indigenous communities.<\/em><\/p>\n

A Brazilian court has said that construction of one the world’s largest hydroelectric dams can proceed without additional consultation with indigenous communities in the region, despite a mass movement opposed to the project.<\/p>\n

Federal prosecutors had filed a motion calling for suspension of construction of the Belo Monte dam in the northern\u00a0state of Para until indigenous groups were consulted and given access to environmental impact reports.<\/p>\n

In a two-one vote on Wednesday, the court upheld the decree issued by Para state authorising the dam’s construction.<\/p>\n

The federal prosecutors’ office in Para said in a statement it would go to the Supreme Court to appeal against\u00a0the ruling.<\/p>\n

“All the studies made arrive at the same conclusion: the dam will provoke drastic changes in the food chain and livelihood of the indigenous communities,” the statement said.<\/p>\n

When completed on the Xingu River that feeds the Amazon, the $11bn, 11,000-megawatt dam would be the world’s third largest behind China’s Three Gorges dam and the Itaipu, which straddles the border of Brazil and Paraguay.<\/p>\n

The government said the dam would provide clean, renewable energy and was essential to fuel the\u00a0country’s growing economy.<\/p>\n

Officials said they spent years planning to protect the environment and local residents before the dam was approved.<\/p>\n

However, environmentalists and indigenous groups said it would devastate wildlife and the livelihoods of 40,000 people who live in the area to be flooded.<\/p>\n

Environmental concerns<\/strong><\/p>\n

Late last month, more than 600 protesters briefly occupied the dam’s construction site to demand that work on the project be stopped. They were evicted by a court order a day later.<\/p>\n

In February, a court ordered the suspension of the dam project, citing environmental concerns.<\/p>\n

Ronaldo Desterro, the federal judge on the case at the time, said that environmental agency Ibama erred when it previously approved work to begin on the dam.<\/p>\n

Celebrities including rock star Sting, film director James Cameron and actress Sigourney Weaver have joined activists in lobbying against the dam.<\/p>\n

When Cameron participated in protests against the project in Brazil last year, he compared the anti-dam struggle by indigenous people to the plot of his film Avatar<\/em>, which depicts natives of a planet fighting to protect their homeland from plans to extract its resources.<\/p>\n

Plans for Belo Monte began in the 1980s under a military government, but its construction was delayed largely due to environmental concerns and the\u00a0resistance from activists.<\/p>\n

Environmental group Amazon Watch has said that 80 per cent of the river is planned to be diverted for the dam, which would cause massive droughts and flooded forests.<\/p>\n

In order to keep the dam in operation during the dry season, upstream and tributary dams would be needed to store water, causing further displacement and environmental havoc, the group said.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 aljazeera.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Contentious Belo Monte dam project in the north to proceed without additional consulation with indigenous communities. A Brazilian court has said that construction of one the world’s largest hydroelectric dams can proceed without additional consultation with indigenous communities in the region, despite a mass movement opposed to the project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15651\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}