{"id":449666,"date":"2026-02-02T19:14:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T19:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/449666\/"},"modified":"2026-02-02T19:14:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T19:14:11","slug":"this-hydropower-plant-provides-10-of-brazils-electricity-so-why-has-it-been-dragged-to-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/449666\/","title":{"rendered":"This hydropower plant provides 10% of Brazil’s electricity. So why has it been dragged to court?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Belo Monte hydropower plant, located in the Brazilian Amazon<\/a>, is one of the largest in the world. It was designed to channel water from the Xingu River in a way that would avoid the need for large reservoirs, which could flood surrounding areas. <\/p>\n

After years of legal battles, authorities approved the project, located in the southwestern part of the state of Par\u00e1, on one condition: it would not threaten ecosystems and communities of Indigenous people along stretches of the river. <\/p>\n

A decade after operations began in 2016, Brazilian courts have found that Belo Monte failed to meet that requirement and that its environmental and social impacts were far greater than forecast.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were just confirming what we already knew,\u201d says Ana La\u00edde Barbosa, a member of Movimento Xingu Vivo, an advocacy group that has been fighting the Belo Monte project since 2008. <\/p>\n

The courts\u2019 understanding, she says, did not happen by chance: \u201cThere was research, experience. There was ancestry and inherited knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is Brazil too reliant on hydropower?<\/p>\n

The legal setbacks raise broader questions about Brazil\u2019s reliance on hydropower<\/a>, with several dams supplying most of the nation\u2019s electricity. <\/p>\n

Belo Monte, the second largest, was originally planned during the military dictatorship in the 1970s but wasn\u2019t pushed forward until decades later by President Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva in 2010, during his second term. Today, it supplies about 10 per cent of Brazil\u2019s electricity.<\/p>\n

In December, the Supreme Court ordered the federal government to pay 19 million reais (around \u20ac3 million) in compensation to Indigenous communities affected by the dam.<\/p>\n

Separately, a local court ordered Norte Energia, the company that built and operates Belo Monte, to supply clean water to communities whose natural sources dried up, leaving them dependent on bottled water.<\/p>\n

In the most consequential ruling, a federal judge ordered Norte Energia to reassess how much water it diverts from the Xingu River to run its turbines, a move the company says could reduce power output.<\/p>\n

Norte Energia says the ruling ordering a review of water management would have no immediate effect, noting that any changes could occur only after all appeals are exhausted. It also said its current model balances environmental concerns with energy security and consumer costs. <\/p>\n

The company has begun supplying water to families in the Xingu region, delivering 20\u2011litre jugs every 15 days, according to local leaders, though not all households have been registered.<\/p>\n

Fast-tracking huge infrastructure projects<\/p>\n

Belo Monte was built amid protests and a licensing process that faced many legal challenges. In 2012, construction was temporarily halted after a court ruled that potentially impacted communities had not been properly consulted. Norte Energia denied the damages and said the dam did not displace or flood Indigenous communities<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Starting in February, new legislation passed by Congress last year will fast-track approval of strategic infrastructure projects. Analysts say impacts from large projects like Belo Monte could become more common.<\/p>\n

Licensing processes that until now took six or seven years and required three separate permits will now be completed within 12 months. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat clearly means less rigorous scrutiny of social and environmental impacts,\u201d says Suely Ara\u00fajo, a policy coordinator at the Climate Observatory, a network of environmental nonprofits.<\/p>\n

Natalie Unterstell, president of Talanoa, a Brazilian climate think tank, said Belo Monte illustrates how impacts such as altered river flows \u2014 including those intensified by climate change \u2014 are often underestimated.<\/p>\n

\u201cBelo Monte is a reminder that climate leadership is not just about curbing deforestation or making speeches at COP summits,\u201d says Unterstell, referring to the annual UN climate conference, which Brazil hosted last year. \u201cIt is also about how the state plans, operates and corrects infrastructure in an era of climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources says in a statement that the new legislation will potentially impact environmental protection and legal certainty.<\/p>\n

The environmental impacts of the dam<\/p>\n

The Juruna are one of the more than two dozen Indigenous and traditional communities living along a 130-kilometre stretch of the Xingu River affected by the dam. They tie their existence to the river, which they regard as a family member, a connection so deep that they commonly say they \u201chave canoes instead of feet\u201d.<\/p>\n

To operate, Belo Monte diverts 70-80 per cent of the river\u2019s flow. When the plant began operating in 2016, Juruna leaders say it marked \u201cthe end of the world\u201d. <\/p>\n

Fish died in large numbers, navigation became nearly impossible and access to neighbouring communities, schools and health care was severely restricted. Their diet shifted from fish to processed food.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe impact was huge \u2014 environmental, social, cultural. And psychological, too. Some people, like my father, suffered deeply in ways I had never seen before,\u201d says Josiel Jacinto Pereira Juruna, a 33-year-old Indigenous leader.<\/p>\n

Indigenous and riverine communities have long warned that diverting water<\/a> would collapse interconnected river systems.<\/p>\n

In 2013, before the river was dammed, the Juruna people began organising to monitor anticipated impacts. <\/p>\n

The Indigenous monitoring group, known as MATI, later partnered with scientists from two Brazilian universities and Brazil\u2019s National Institute for Amazonian Research. They collected evidence that helped prosecutors build a case showing Belo Monte\u2019s impacts were far greater than Norte Energia had acknowledged.<\/p>\n

Monitoring is carried out daily by Indigenous and riverine residents, who track water levels, groundwater, fish spawning areas and catches using mobile apps and field notebooks. The data is later digitised and jointly analysed with researchers.<\/p>\n

Josiel Juruna says the ruling brought a sense of validation. \u201cWe have to fight so much, prove so much. There is so much evidence, so many things happening, but at the same time nothing changes,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n

‘Intensifying’ droughts<\/p>\n

Recent studies show that because of the Xingu River\u2019s characteristics and intensifying droughts<\/a>, the plant rarely operates at full capacity. Norte Energia has said that revising water diversion, as ordered by the court, could increase electricity prices and force greater reliance on thermal power plants, leading to higher carbon emissions.<\/p>\n

Raimundo da Cruz Silva, a fisherman who turned to cocoa farming after Belo Monte, lives in the world\u2019s largest rainforest and river basin \u2014 yet he struggles with a water crisis. <\/p>\n

\u201cToday, the territory is completely lacking potable drinking water,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Wells that once reached water at two to three metres now must be dug as deep as 15 metres, and even then, \u201csome still produce nothing\u201d.<\/p>\n

Ara\u00fajo, from Climate Observatory, says shutting down Belo Monte is not under discussion, but that a future renewal of its operating license should depend on measures to reduce impacts to people and the environment. <\/p>\n

\u201cBrazil\u2019s history with hydropower must be a learning process,\u201d she says. \u201cWe can\u2019t accept that social and environmental impacts are ignored. They must be assessed with the highest level of rigour.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Belo Monte hydropower plant, located in the Brazilian Amazon, is one of the largest in the world.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":449667,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[971,7426,49,48,295,11827,100490,304,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-449666","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-amazon","9":"tag-brazil","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-environment","13":"tag-indigenous-peoples","14":"tag-rain-forest","15":"tag-renewable-energy","16":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}