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Cranes and trucks constructing the Belo Monte dam in Pará, Brazil (Image: Dado Galdieri/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

ABOUT 20 men, their arms painted like tortoise shells, are silently hacking away at the forest, opening up a corridor about 4 metres wide. When they have finished, the corridor will stretch for 230 kilometres, encircling the land they call Sawré Muybu. Every so often the men, indigenous Munduruku, erect a sign asserting their ownership of the land in their own language and in Portuguese.

The ancestors of these men used to decapitate their enemies and stick their heads on poles. Although the Munduruku gave up head-hunting long ago, some of the signs feature a painting of a head on a pike. This is their none-too-veiled way of telling the Brazilian government they are determined to defend this tract of Amazon forest that has been theirs for hundreds of years.

The government has other ideas. If it gets its way, work will soon begin on a huge hydroelectric dam close to Sawré Muybu on the Tapajós river, one of the major tributaries of the Amazon. Six other large dams are also on the drawing board for the Tapajós basin (see map). If the São Luiz do Tapajós dam goes ahead, parts of Sawré Muybu will be flooded.FIG-mg30110601.jpg

Dreams of tapping into the immense power of the Amazon began in the 1970s, at a time when little attention was paid to climate and biodiversity. The military dictatorship in power at the time decided to start with a chain of dams on the Xingu river, another mighty tributary of the Amazon. However, after a lengthy battle with environmentalists and local people, it scaled back its plans to a single dam, albeit a huge one.

Belo Monte finally got the go-ahead in 2011. When it comes on stream in 2019 it will be the third-largest hydroelectric dam in the world. The building site is so big that it seems as if a new Panama Canal is being carved out of the forest. Even if one harbours reservations about the wisdom of this massive undertaking, one can’t help but be impressed by the speed and efficiency with which huge layers of rock are blasted into the air and the rubble carted away by a phalanx of giant lorries.

This scene could eventually be replicated across large swathes of the Amazon. According to ecologist Philip Fearnside, a senior researcher at the National Institute for Amazon Research in Manaus, the government has ambitions to turn much of the basin into chains of reservoirs for the production of hydropower. Most of the energy will be used to power big mineral extraction and refining projects in the Amazon itself, particularly aluminium smelting and gold mining.

The issues surrounding the construction of these dams are painfully familiar: habitat destruction, loss of biodiversity and heritage, and the trampling of the rights of vulnerable people. But the scale on which it could happen adds up to a huge transformation of one of the world’s most important natural environments.

No surrender

Before they resorted to direct action to defend their land, the Munduruku tried to go through the proper channels. Brazil is a signatory to the International Labour Organization’s Convention 169, under which indigenous and tribal people shouldn’t be removed from their land without their free and informed consent. It also states that before licensing a dam, a government must canvass the opinion of all affected groups and only then undertake viability studies. However, in early 2013 the Brazilian government authorised a research company to send in teams of scientists to carry out the viability studies, even though proper consultations with the Munduruku hadn’t happened.

The Munduruku are fighting the government over the dam project (Image: Lunae Parracho Reuters)

Incensed, in June 2013 the Munduruku took three biologists hostage and paraded them, hands bound, in the square of Jacareacanga, a town beside the Tapajós. The government reacted quickly, promising to carry out the consultations and the biologists were released. However, three weeks later, the government sent the scientists back in under the protection of 250 policemen – still without any proper consultation.

According to reports from the Munduruku and other local people, the police created an atmosphere of intimidation and terror by entering villages unannounced, sometimes arriving by helicopter. In a surreal episode which recalled the days of the dictatorship, a policeman bearing a machine gun tried to bar our way as we approached a group of biologists in a roadside cafe in a remote area of the Tapajós valley.

Brazil’s constitution also appears to be on the Munduruku’s side, as it bans the permanent removal of indigenous people from their land. But the land claim has to be recognised by the authorities, which can only happen after a report giving the coordinates is officially published by FUNAI, the National Indian Foundation.

FUNAI began mapping Sawré Muybu eight years ago and completed the job in September 2013, but has yet to publish its report. Until that happens, the territory isn’t formally recognised as belonging to the Munduruku. The Munduruku believe that the government is deliberately dragging its heels.

We obtained a leaked copy of the report, which shows that FUNAI accepts the Munduruku’s claim to the land. The Munduruku are using its coordinates to mark out the boundary of their territory. But it is a long and laborious process.

The Munduruku’s troubles have created a dilemma for the scientists carrying out the viability studies, for whom it has become embarrassingly clear that they are involved not in impartial research but in a fait accompli. Talking off the record, some are distraught at the prospect of the overwhelming losses that will be borne by people and ecosystems if the dam goes ahead. Yet they are reluctant to protest or resign, fearing that they will be blacklisted by the government and their career prospects harmed. So they dutifully produce their reports hoping to get the government to rethink its policies. But the government simply cherry-picks the evidence.

A more vigorous response has come from archaeologists. Evidence is being unearthed that the Tapajós basin was occupied by indigenous people for thousands of years before the Portuguese arrived, and archaeologists have been contracted to carry out environmental impact studies. This has caused widespread unease. At their meeting in August 2014, the northern branch of the Brazilian Archaeological Society passed a motion stating: “We are gravely concerned by the involvement of archaeologists in a process that relies on the presence of the National Security Force to guarantee the fulfilment of the research. For this reason we are calling on our professional colleagues not to take part in activities related to the environmental licensing of the dams along the Tapajós river.”

The concern at the biodiversity loss and the threat to indigenous people is exacerbated by a growing awareness that the drive to harness the power of the rivers may, in the long term, be futile. São Paulo, the industrial heartland of Brazil, is in the grip of the worst drought in living memory. The clouds from the Amazon that make the basin itself so wet and also deliver rain to the south of the country – dubbed “flying rivers” by one Brazilian scientist – have failed to materialise.

The confluence of the Amazon and Tapajos rivers (Image: Ulysses/www.agefotostock.com)

While this may be a result of natural climate variability, Antonio Nobre, a senior researcher at Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research in São José dos Campos, says that the disruption is linked to deforestation. has shown that Amazon vegetation, particularly large trees, play a central role in maintaining the hydrological cycle. “In a single day a large tree in the rainforest can pump over 1000 litres of moisture from the soil into the atmosphere. If this is scaled up for the whole forest, it means the Amazon forest transpires 20 billion tonnes of water a day,” he says. Cut down the forest and you destroy the flying rivers.

According to official satellite data, 22 per cent of the forest has been felled. But this is an underestimate as it fails to account for selective logging, which the satellite images don’t detect. After several years of marked declines in forest clearance, which won Brazil international plaudits, the level of deforestation has risen again.

It seems probable that continued forest destruction will sooner or later trigger a dramatic transformation of the Amazon. The tipping point was spelled out in 2013 by the Brazilian Panel on Climate Change: “Modelling studies have suggested that, if deforestation reaches 40 per cent in the region, drastic changes will likely occur in the hydrological cycle, with a 40 per cent reduction in rainfall during the months from July to November.”

Even scientists with a less alarmist outlook than Nobre believe that, if deforestation continues, the viability of the large dams may be compromised. Until recently most scientists thought that cutting down trees near dams increased the amount of water flowing into them. But a recent study by the Amazon Environmental Research Institute in San Francisco, California, came to a very different conclusion. It found that by 2050, when on present trends at least 40 per cent of Brazil’s Amazon forest will be gone, there will be a significant decline in river flows and energy generation (, vol 110, p 9601). This would make the reliability of the dams as an energy source highly questionable.

Another difficulty is that big development projects always provoke an unruly influx of illegal loggers, land thieves, cattle ranchers and slash-and-burn farmers, who exacerbate the deforestation. The government promises it will be different with São Luiz do Tapajós, through the use of river platforms similar to North Sea oil rigs to make it possible to bring people in using helicopters rather than roads.

But Juan Doblas of the non-profit Social-Environmental Institute in Altamira points out a flaw: “Yes, when a dam is up and running, you can bring workers in by helicopter. But the main environmental damage is done during the building of the dam, when thousands of labourers are needed. You can’t bring in this volume by helicopter. Big projects always cause forest felling and there is no sign of that ending.”

“Big projects always cause forest felling and there is no sign of that ending”

A radical solution would be to see if Brazil could do without dams on the Amazon. Nobre says that much could be done to save energy. “Brazil wastes 55 per cent of public street lighting because the lenses spread the beam wider than is necessary. By refocusing the light we would save as much energy as Belo Monte will generate,” he says. Another source of waste is electric showers. “If we were to install solar water heaters, which would not be difficult with the amount of sunshine we get, there would be no need for further hydroelectric dams in the Amazon.”

Along with growing doubts from scientists, another factor is creating the perception that the authorities’ love affair with Amazon hydropower may be waning. Historically, one of the biggest drivers of dam-building has been a cosy relationship between big engineering companies and their political allies. “Energy planning in Brazil is not treated as a strategic issue but as a source of money for engineering companies and politicians,” says Felício Pontes, prosecutor for the Federal Public Ministry in Pará.

But many of the companies are now caught up in a massive involving bribery and money laundering by the state-owned oil company, Petrobrás. Investigators are examining the contracts for the Belo Monte dam, and a leading executive of one of the companies, Camargo Corrêa, which has been funding viability studies for the São Luís do Tapajós dam, has been arrested.

As a result, there is no longer the same impetus to push ahead with the dams. Until recently, the government was planning to generate electricity from all the main tributaries of the Amazon east of the city of Manaus. But in a leaked copy of its latest 10-year energy plan, obtained by the newspaper, all dams except São Luiz do Tapajós have been removed. Even this is no longer on the list of priority projects to be built over the next five years. If confirmed, this amounts to a major rethink of Brazil’s energy plans, and a possible reprieve for the Amazon.

Meanwhile, the Munduruku fight on. Emboldened by a judicial decision that “full, free and prior consultations” must be carried out, a delegation of 30 made the five-day bus journey to Brasilia at the end of January to present their demands – the central one being the cancellation of the dam.

They are still a long way from achieving victory. But after decades of bitter struggle, the battle for the Amazon finally seems to be going their way.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Dambusters”