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Web End = Ambio 2015, 44:426439DOI 10.1007/s13280-015-0642-z
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Web End = Amazon dams and waterways: Brazils Tapajs Basin plans
Philip M. Fearnside
Received: 8 October 2014 / Revised: 19 December 2014 / Accepted: 11 February 2015 / Published online: 21 March 2015
Abstract Brazil plans to build 43 large dams ([30 MW) in the Tapajs Basin, ten of which are priorities for completion by 2022. Impacts include ooding indigenous lands and conservation units. The Tapajs River and two tributaries (the Juruena and Teles Pires Rivers) are also the focus of plans for waterways to transport soybeans from Mato Grosso to ports on the Amazon River. Dams would allow barges to pass rapids and waterfalls. The waterway plans require dams in a continuous chain, including the Chacoro Dam that would ood 18 700 ha of the Munduruku Indigenous Land. Protections in Brazils constitution and legislation and in international conventions are easily neutralized through application of security suspensions, as has already occurred during licensing of several dams currently under construction in the Tapajs Basin. Few are aware of security suspensions, resulting in little impetus to change these laws.
Keywords Amazonia Brazil Dams Hydropower
Hydroelectric dams
INTRODUCTION
The Amazon Basin, roughly two-thirds of which is in Brazil, is the focus of a massive surge in hydroelectric dam construction, with plans that would eventually convert almost all Amazon tributaries into chains of reservoirs (e.g., Finer and Jenkins 2012; Kahn et al. 2014; Tundisi et al. 2014; Fearnside 2014a). Dams in tropical areas like Amazonia have a wide range of environmental and social impacts, including loss of terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity (Santos and Hernandez 2009; Val et al. 2010), greenhouse gas emissions (Abril et al. 2005; Kemenes et al. 2007; Fearnside and Pueyo 2012), loss of sheries, and other resources that support local livelihoods (Barthem
et al. 1991; Fearnside 2014b), methylation of mercury (rendering it poisonous to animals, including humans) (e.g., Leino and Lodenius 1995; Fearnside 1999), and population displacement (Cernea 1988, 2000; WCD 2000; McCully 2001; Scudder 2006; Oliver-Smith 2009, 2010). Dam projects throughout...