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Brasilia. A controversial plan endorsed this week to build an immense dam in Brazil’s rainforest has attracted a formidable bloc of opponents — ecologists, indigenous groups and Sting.

The dam, in Belo Monte in the northern state of Para, will be the third-biggest hydroelectric dam in the world, after the Three Gorges dam in China and Brazil’s existing Itaipu dam.

It will produce 11,000 Megawatts of energy for Brazil’s rapidly growing economy and will cost an estimated at $11 billion to build.

Critics have warned it will leave vast environmental devastation in its wake. Some 500 square kilometers of land will be inundated, and indigenous communities living along 100 kilometers of the Xingu River will be displaced from their traditional territories.

The British pop singer Sting brought the issue to international attention last year when he invited a high-profile indigenous Brazilian, Raoni, to denounce the dam during a concert in Sao Paulo.

“It’s a project that only benefits companies. Despite all they say, it’s not clean energy. It generates methane gas, which provokes climate change, and it will displace 30,000 residents,” Antonia Melo, of the Xingo Vivo Movement that groups 150 indigenous and social groups opposed to the dam, said.

The region’s bishop, Erwin Krautler, counts among the dam’s fiercest opponents.

“The project completely underestimates the consequences that will be irreversible,” he said. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva “promised to speak with the population, but there was no dialogue,” Krautler said.

The state prosecutor’s office has raised questions over the project, which would see the local population double with the arrival of 85,000 job seekers, who would contribute to deforestation.

But the federal government, which has already had two other dams built on the Madeira river in the Amazon, insisted that the new dam met environmental criteria.

“This is without any doubt the strictest environmental license in history. The company that wins the tender will have to spend $800 million in compensation,” notably over the loss of native lands, Environment Minister Carlos Minc said.

Energy expert Adriano Pires said “Belo Monte will ensure clean energy production” at a time when Brazil faced a 5 percent increase in consumption.

“In Germany, which is always cited as an example, 10 percent of the energy comes from renewable sources, whereas in Brazil, hydroelectric plants produce 90 percent of the electricity. We can’t give up on this because Belo Monte is important.”



Agence France-Presse