Amazon Basin

French utility company Suez, Spain's Endesa and banks including Santander filed to bid for a major electricity project in Brazil's Amazon, the country's electricity regulator said on Friday.Suez joined with Brazil's Eletrosul, part of federal power giant Eletrobras, to bid on the 9 billion-real ($5 billion) Santo Antonio project on the Madeira river in the Amazon. The government will auction a concession to build and operate the 3,150 megawatt dam on Dec. 10.Electricity regulator Aneel said on its Web site four other groups also filed documents to bid on the Santo Antonio project, which toget

Ferramentas para os trabalhadores, as comunidades e os ativistas

A remote Amazonian tribe are blockading a major highway in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso in protest at a series of hydroelectric dams that will destroy their vital fishing grounds. The Enawene Nawe Indians set up their blockade yesterday morning. Companies led by the world’s largest soya producers, the Maggi family, are pushing for a vast complex of dams to be built along the Juruena river which flows through the tribe’s land. Europe buys half the soya exported from Mato Grosso. The Enawene Nawe, who eat no red meat, fear the fish they rely on will no longer be able to reac

Brazil has given the initial go-ahead for the construction of two hydro-electric dams to be built on the longest tributary of the Amazon River. The Madeira River projects have divided opinion even within government and in recent years have been one of the most environmentally sensitive issues. The river is said to have one of the most diverse fish stocks in the world. Environmentalists fear they could be threatened by the development of the dams costing billions of dollars. Such have been the sensitivities surrounding this decision that Brazil’s environmental agency Ibama took two years

Brasília - O aviso do edital para o leilão de energia da Usina Hidrelétrica de Santo Antônio, que será construída no Rio Madeira, em Rondônia, foi publicado hoje (1º) no Diário Oficial da União. O leilão deve ser realizado no dia 10 de dezembro. A diretoria colegiada da Agência Nacional de Energia Elétrica (Aneel) aprovou o edital na última terça-feira (30). O preço máximo da energia foi definido em R$ 122 por megawatt-hora (MWh) e vencerá o leilão quem oferecer o menor lance em reais por megawatts-hora. O pregão será realizado na sede da Aneel em Brasília, por meio

Brasília - A study on the possibilities of building hydroelectric dams on the Xingu River, which flows through Mato Grosso and Pará states, has been delivered to the National Electrical Energy Agency (ANEEL). Studies for the document, which the Federal Attorney´s office (MPF) and indigenous leaders who live along the river have been expecting, was carried out by Eletrobrás and by the companies Odebrecht, Camargo Corrêa, and Andrade Gutierrez, and the document was delivered yesterday (Oct. 31). In an event last week, Glenn Switkes, the Latin America Director of the non-governmental

O Governo Brasileiro Avança com o Projeto de Construir Barragens num dos Principais Tributários do Amazonas Versão Original: Brazilian Government Moves to Dam Principal Amazon Tributary Traduzido por: Frances Goodingham Programa de las Américas www.ircamericas.org Nas últimas semanas, a atenção do governo brasileiro voltou-se para a difícil tarefa de construir gigantescas barragens hidroelétricas no bacia do rio Amazonas. O projeto apresenta ao Presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva uma enorme contradição—entre seu ambicioso plano de desenvolvimento econômico baseado na in

Around 500 members of the Movement of Dam Affected People (MAB) blocked the access road to the São Salvador Dam worksite in the early hours of 10/09/2007. The dam which is located between the municipalities of São Salvador and Parana on Rio Tocantins (State of Tocantins), will also affect the municipality of Minacu (Goias). The power plant with an installed capacity of 240 MW belongs to the Energy Consortium São Salvador (CESS), whose major stakeholder is Tractebel Energia S.A. To the moment, none from the company appeared to negotiate with the affected people camped on the site. In meet

Schemes for Dozens of Dams on Tributaries Would Choke River, Stifle OppositionWorld Rivers Review, June 2006 The Amazon River, whose tributaries are formed in the Peruvian Andes, flows over a sedimentary flood plain hundreds of miles wide, with thousands of lagoons and seasonally flooded lakes – it is a river that is impossible to dam. However, the principal tributaries of the Amazon in its southern basin – the Madeira, Tapajós, Xingu, and to the east the Araguaia and Tocantins – descend steeply from crystalline rocks into the Amazon basin. From these heights rush enormous