“We are showing the Brazilian government and companies that we don’t need a dam to generate energy. We are showing the Brazilian government and companies that we are capable of anything.”
Alessandra Korap Munduruku, winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize
Earlier this year Amazon Watch and our partners at GivePower installed a solar microgrid in the remote Munduruku village of Sawré Muybu, an important regional hub located on the banks of the Tapajós River and vast preserved Indigenous forests in the Brazilian Amazon. Together, we made you a video to take you behind the scenes of this powerful project.
This was Amazon Watch’s first Power to the Protectors solar installation since the COVID-19 pandemic and was years in the making and planned closely with longtime partners in Brazil’s Munduruku nation. The project provides steady clean power to village homes and communal buildings previously reliant on costly, intermittent, and polluting diesel generators.
Sawré Muybu territory lacks formal government recognition and lies at the crux of Brazil’s movement for Indigenous land rights and ecosystem protection. Growing illegal mining, logging, and land grabbing seriously threaten the Munduruku community’s lands and security. They need dependable power to monitor Sawré Muybu and alert authorities and partners of land invasions and risks to their wellbeing.
The Munduruku defeated an earlier attempt to build hydroelectric dams on the Tapajós, preventing the devastation the Belo Monte dam brought to the Xingu River and its people. As Alessandra Korap and Chief Juarez Saw remind us, solar power installation demonstrates Indigenous leadership on viable energy alternatives to destructive hydroelectric and fossil fuel infrastructure, lighting a brighter future for remote Amazonian communities.
