Belo Monte Dam
Brazil is an enormous country that needs an immense quantity of resources to keep its economy functioning, even more when we take into account that it expects to become one of the new world powers, along with China. In order to find these resources, inappropriate means are many times taken, means that are harmful for the correct sustenance of the nature. This is the case of the Belo Monte dam, and many other similar projects as well, that are developed along the Amazon (essential zone for the survival of the Earth) and in many other places of South America and the world.
Economic progress must not, under any circumstance, go against the social and environmental progress. When this happens, the ways of growth must be reformulated. In Belo Monte’s situation, its construction began without the proper environmental and social impact studies, taking away legitimacy to a project that could represent lots of benefits, both for the Brazilian industry and the general community. Nevertheless, instead of those benefits, what this project has brought is the protest of the national and international communities. This is due to the way that all the processes had been managed, neither taking really into account the geographical place where it’s located (the Amazon forest) nor involving the affected communities, without mentioning the multiple corruption and overruns scandals that have taken the cost of Belo Monte form R$4.5 billion in 2005, to R$19 billion in 2010.
When we say that projects of this kind must not be initiated without the consent of the affected communities, is just because the latter determines the success or failure of the former. The surroundings of Belo Monte is inhabited by indigenous people and fishing villages, which although according to the government will not have to abandon that terrain in the short term, in the long one they might be forced to do so because of the diminishing of the resources they use to survive. If this happens, these peoples will
Economic progress must not, under any circumstance, go against the social and environmental progress. When this happens, the ways of growth must be reformulated. In Belo Monte’s situation, its construction began without the proper environmental and social impact studies, taking away legitimacy to a project that could represent lots of benefits, both for the Brazilian industry and the general community. Nevertheless, instead of those benefits, what this project has brought is the protest of the national and international communities. This is due to the way that all the processes had been managed, neither taking really into account the geographical place where it’s located (the Amazon forest) nor involving the affected communities, without mentioning the multiple corruption and overruns scandals that have taken the cost of Belo Monte form R$4.5 billion in 2005, to R$19 billion in 2010.
When we say that projects of this kind must not be initiated without the consent of the affected communities, is just because the latter determines the success or failure of the former. The surroundings of Belo Monte is inhabited by indigenous people and fishing villages, which although according to the government will not have to abandon that terrain in the short term, in the long one they might be forced to do so because of the diminishing of the resources they use to survive. If this happens, these peoples will