The environmental catastrophe of the Belo Monte Dam

Over 20 years before its construction, the Belo Monte Dam in northern Brazil has been surrounded by controversy. Located on the Xingu River in the state of Pará, environmentalists and indigenous groups opposed the Belo Monte project from the very beginning, until it was eventually completed in the 2010s, during the center-left Workers’ Party government.

It is currently the world’s fourth-largest hydroelectric dam complex and the second-largest in Brazil, behind the Itaipu Dam on the Paraguayan border. In all, building Belo Monte cost BRL 30 billion (USD 5.85 billion) in public and private investment.

And now, ten years after works began, pessimistic forecasts of the social and environmental disaster that the Belo Monte Dam would cause in the surrounding region appear to be coming true. The municipality of Altamira — the temporary home of over 100,000 workers involved in the dam’s construction — has now become one of the most violent towns in Brazil. And by holding huge amounts of water to produce energy, Belo Monte is slowly killing the Xingu River, which is one of the most important waterways in the Amazon region.

After interfering with the...