Rights of Native Population, Deforestation, Destruction of Biodiversity: Stop Brazil’s Belo Monte Monster Hydroelectric Dam

By Global Research News
Global Research, August 04, 2013
amazonwatch.org

While magazines and TV chains report about the lives and love affairs of movie actors and actresses, football players and other celebrities, the Chief of the Kayapo tribe heard the worst news of his entire life: Mrs. Dilma, the president of Brazil, has given her approval for the construction of an enormous hydroelectric central (the world’s third largest one).

This means the death sentence for ALL the tribes living at the shores of the river because the barrage will flood more or less 988,421 acres of the forest. More than 40 000 natives will have to find other living surroundings where they will be able to survive. The destruction of the natural habitat, the deforestation and the disappearance of several species of plants and animals will be a fait accompli.

We know that a simple image is the equivalent of a thousand words, it shows the price to be paid for the “quality of life” of our so-called “modern comforts.” There is no space in the world anymore for those who live differently. Everything has to be smoothed away, that everyone, in the name of globalization must lose his and her identity and way of living.

“No one knows the true cost of the Belo Monte Dam. What is clear is that Belo Monte will be one of the largest, most devastating infrastructure projects ever built in the Amazon. As its costs rocket above all previous estimates and the full extent of its impacts across a broad swath of the Amazon become more evident, it grows clearer than ever that Brazil doesn’t need Belo Monte, and that the project will bring destruction – not development – to a unique region.

Recent technical studies concerning Brazil’s electricity sector demonstrate viable opportunities to implement new energy efficiency standards and adopt energy alternatives with low socio-environmental and financial costs when compared with hydroelectric dams.  However, the Brazilian government has shown itself unwilling to debate its highly flawed energy model that aims to sacrifice the last remaining wild rivers of the Amazon…

The sheer enormity of the project means that an area of more than 1,500 square kilometers would be devastated.

 Brazil could meet its growing needs for electricity through less harmful energy alternatives and through the implementation of robust energy efficiency programs.

Brazilian citizens would continue to pay among the highest energy tariffs in the developing world in exchange for electricity from one the most inefficient dam in the country’s history.

Scientific studies, such as those by leading climate change scientist Philip Fearnside of the Amazon Research Institute INPA, have shown that greenhouse gas emissions from large dam reservoirs in the Brazilian Amazon can be equal to or higher than the same amount of electricity produced by coal burning power plants.32 Brazil is currently the world’s 4th largest emitter of carbon due to its emissions from deforestation in the Amazon, and while the government has adopted significant emission reduction targets, the recent rise in deforestation rates and the proposed dam expansion plans in the Amazon could stymie these efforts.”

Thank you in the name of life, nature and biodiversity.

http://amazonwatch.org/take-action/stop-the-belo-monte-monster-dam
Articles by: Global Research News

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