Environmental lawsuits filed against Amazon dam projects | Amazon Watch
Amazon Watch

Environmental lawsuits filed against Amazon dam projects

July 9, 2009 | Christiana Sciaudone | Recharge News

Civil lawsuits have been filed against Brazil’s environment institute for ignoring environmental concerns when issuing licenses to allow the construction of two dams on the Amazon’s Madeira River.

Three non-governmental organisations – Amigos da Terra Amazônia Brasileira, the ethno-environmental Kanindé defence association and the co-ordination of Brazilian Amazon indigenous organisations – have together filed two civil suits against Ibama, the Brazilian institute for the environment and natural renewable resources.

The suits allege that Ibama failed to study crucial issues concerning the impacts of the dams, and that the four licenses issued to the Jirau and Santo Antônio dams went against the recommendations of its own experts.

Meanwhile, federal and state prosecutors in the state of Rondônia, where the dams are being built, have also charged the president of Ibama, Roberto Messias Franco, with “administrative improbity” for issuing an installation licence to the Jirau dam not in accordance with environmental legislation.

The second license was “one of the greatest environmental crimes against society,” the prosecutors say.

They also allege that no solution was provided for the management of logs and detritus – the river is named for the great quantity of wood, or “madeira,” that runs down it.

Franco risks losing his job and paying a fine 100 times the value of his salary.

Prosecutors also say that no mention was made of how areas degraded by construction and inundation will be addressed, and that the dam’s owners had failed to consider the reproductive cycles of migratory fish.

The Santo Antônio dam is being built by Santo Antônio Energia, which is majority-owned by Furnas and Odebrecht. Energia Sustentável do Brasil, which is majority-owned by France’s GDF Suez, is building the Jirau dam. Together it is estimated they will cost more than R$22bn ($11bn)to build.

Amigos da Terra first filed action against the dams in 2007, but a judge rejected the motion because building had not begun.

Deforestation was among the environmental impacts allegedly not considered, even though this “is obvious given that it’s in the middle of the Amazon”, says Roberto Smeraldi, a director of Amigos da Terra. “Essential aspects were not studied.”

Two Ibama licenses were required for construction to begin on the two dams. Each time one of the four licenses was issued, Ibama experts said they did not believe the licenses were merited, but Ibama issued them anyway.

Smeraldi says this is illegal in Brazil: “You cannot contradict the opinion of an expert unless you have another expert opinion, not a political opinion.”

He adds: “Our objective is to invalidate the licenses and oblige them to complete studies – and eventually change that which the experts consider irregular.”

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