The Belo Monte dam faces endless hurdles and controversies

Mario Osava in Inter Press Service: The Xingu river flows around small isles and islands and across rapids and waterfalls in Brazil's Amazon jungle, and has a dramatically reduced flow during dry season. Navigating it presents constant hurdles and risks. The project to build the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam along the Xingu in the northern state of Pará, in the eastern part of the rainforest, is facing a similar variety of obstacles.

The opposition is not limited to the usual complaints by local environmentalists and social activists. A noisy coalition is taking shape, and energy experts are also questioning Belo Monte's economic viability and the magnitude of the benefits it will provide. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) recently urged the Brazilian government to "stop the licensing and construction of the Belo Monte Dam project" to protect the rights of local indigenous communities that will suffer the effects of the dam.

On Apr. 1, the IACHR granted precautionary measures for the indigenous communities, in response to a petition filed by 40 Brazilian NGOs in November. The IACHR asked the Brazilian government to undertake a "free, prior, informed, of good faith and culturally appropriate" consultation process with the indigenous communities; grant them access to the social and environmental impact study, translated into native languages; and adopt "vigorous and comprehensive measures" to protect the "lives and personal integrity" of isolated indigenous peoples in the Xingu river basin threatened by the dam, including effective measures to prevent the spread of disease by the influx of outsiders….

Greenpeace demonstrating against the Belo Monte dam last year, shot by Roosewelt Pinheiro/Agência Brasil, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Brazil license