Greenhouse Gases in the Environmental Impact Study for the Belo Monte Hydroelectric Dam

Sumario: The Environmental Impact Study (EIA) for the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam proposed for construction by Brazil’s federal government on the Xingu River in Pará shows how little the environmental review process has advanced in Brazil since 1986, when the EIA became mandatory for dams and other infrastructure projects. The document completely avoids the major impacts that the dam would have in inducing destruction of much wider areas upstream of the dam by creating a “planned crisis” that would provide justification for building much larger dams upstream, particularly the Babaquara or “Altamira” Dam that would flood 6140 km2, all of which is tropical forest and most of which is indigenous land. The report also grossly underestimates emissions of greenhouse gases from the dam, claiming that the emissions of methane would be minimal based on an estimate that completely ignores the studies in the scientific literature indicating significant emissions from the water that passes through the turbines of dams. Because the water flow in the Xingu River is highly seasonal, the electricity that can be produced by Belo Monte dam (without the unmentioned upstream dams) is insufficient to justify the cost of the dam, transmission lines, substations and other infrastructure. The EIA focuses exclusively on the dam itself, ignoring the lack of economic viability of the overall project and the implications of this for construction of highly damaging dams upstream. Much of the electricity to be generated is to be used for production of alumina and aluminum for export, which is one of the uses with the least possible benefit for the Brazilian population due to the very small amount of employment generated per GWh of electricity. A national discussion of how electrical energy is used in the country has never occurred, and should be a prerequisite for any of the dam-building projects now planned for Amazonia. Once rational decisions are made on the use of energy, the environmental and social costs and benefits of each proposed dam must be assessed in a fair and open way, which has not been the case so far with Belo Monte.