In our state, dams have been built on many rivers. These dams are used to produce the electricity we need, but they also create problems for fish and other wildlife near the rivers. Therefore, we should not build any more dams. Instead, we should use solar energy, or energy from the sun, to produce electricity. This will help us protect our wildlife and enjoy the natural beauty around us.
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Amazon Dams Keep the Lights On But Could Hurt Fish, Forests
A surge in hydroelectric power could displace the iconic region’s indigenous peoples and resources.
WHEN ASHÁNINKA INDIAN leader Ruth Buendía realized that a hydroelectric dam on the Amazon's Ene River would displace thousands of her people, she vowed to fight it. The project, she argued, would bring more hardship to families—including her own—already uprooted by political violence.
Leaders in the Peruvian communities along the river were divided over the plan, with some looking forward to high-paying construction jobs. But Buendía stood her ground.
Plans for that dam were eventually suspended. But about 150 other dams already exist in the Amazon basin, with other controversial projects underway and hundreds more planned.
Scientists worry that dams will harm the Amazon’s legendary biodiversity by blocking fish-spawning runs, reducing the flow of vital soil nutrients, and clearing forests. Reservoirs behind the dams also could displace indigenous people, like the Asháninka, whose livelihood depends on the rivers.
Hydroelectric projectsPlanned or inventoriedUnder constructionIn operation
Indigenous group
This construction boom is spurred by an ever-increasing thirst for energy stemming from more than a decade of steady economic growth in Amazon countries. With a huge network of rivers spread across an area almost as big as the contiguous United States, hydroelectricity is the largest—and cheapest—source of energy.
The water supplying these dam projects can be precarious: The severe drought in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo is a powerful reminder that climate change threatens the water that turns the turbines and keeps the lights on in Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia.
“I think these countries should take a fresh look at energy generation from the Amazon. Most of the decisions being made are essentially heedless or unaware of that bigger picture,” ” said Thomas Lovejoy, an Amazon biodiversity expert with the United Nations Foundation and George Mason University in Virginia.
While dams are being dismantled in parts of the United States to return rivers to their natural courses, dam construction is expanding in many developing countries, including Africa’s Congo and Nile rivers and Asia’s Mekong River.
Four dams on the Mekong in China already produce more than 8,800 megawatts of electricity, and nearly 100 more are on the drawing board for the lower Mekong, particularly in Laos. Officials in China recently rejected the Xiaonanhai dam on the middle Yangtze River, but another one will be built on a tributary upstream.
Hydropower Is Cheap and Plentiful
Hydropower accounts for about 16 percent of the world’s electricity, but more than 70 percent in Latin America, particularly in the Amazon basin, where it is more plentiful and cheaper than any other source. With 200 million people, Brazil leads the region in energy demand—and in Amazonian dams.
In flat areas of the Amazon such as the lowlands in Brazil, a hydroelectric plant requires a large dam to raise the water level enough to create a powerful cascade. Reservoirs for storing water behind those dams—such as the Balbina on the Uatumã River and the massive Tucuruí on the Tocantins—can displace tens of thousands of people. Behind the Tucuruí dam, which generates 8,370 megawatts of electricity, the reservoir covers an area larger than Rhode Island.
Picture of construction embloyee housing at Belo Monte dam
These houses were built for employees of the planned Belo Monte hydroelectric dam in the Amazon rainforest. Experts say dams are leading to development projects that clear forests.
In the mountains, hydroelectric plants have smaller footprints because rivers are on steeper slopes, so they don’t need large reservoirs. But these dams on the headwaters of the Amazonian rivers, on the eastern slope of the Andes, pose a different set of problems: They block the flow of important sediment. Fine grains of silt, which give Amazonian rivers their muddy appearance, are coated with organic material that provides essential nutrients to ecosystems.