What is the largest dam on the Amazon river?
What is the largest dam on the Amazon river?
Belo Monte Dam
The Belo Monte Dam (formerly known as Kararaô) is a hydroelectric dam complex on the northern part of the Xingu River in the state of Pará, Brazil.
What is the purpose of the Belo Monte Dam?
As one of more than 60 large dams being planned for the Brazilian Amazon, Belo Monte would divert the flow of the Xingu River and devastate an extensive area of the Brazilian rainforest, displacing over 20,000 people and threatening the survival of indigenous peoples.
Why does Brazil’s government want to build the dam?
The proposed construction of the Belo Monte dam in the Amazon state of Para is part of a major government investment drive to help the country keep up with soaring energy demand from a rapidly expanding economy, while curbing greenhouse gas emissions. Hydroelectric power produces no direct carbon dioxide.
How will the Belo Monte Dam affect the environment?
Belo Monte’s reservoir, filled at the end of 2015, flooded 260 square miles of lowlands and forest, displaced more than 20,000 people, and caused extensive damage to a river ecosystem that contains more than 500 fish species, many of them found nowhere else.
Does Brazil have dams?
The development of small hydropower dams is widespread throughout Brazil and elsewhere in the world, vastly overshadowing large hydropower projects.
Why is the Belo Monte Dam bad?
Experts today attribute Belo Monte’s stunning inefficiency to a variety of factors, including poor design, poor siting on a seasonally variable river, plus dramatic increases in regional deforestation that are drawing down Xingu River water levels, and finally, global climate change, which is bringing more drought — …
Why is the Belo Monte dam bad?
Why is the Belo Monte Dam controversial?
The controversial Belo Monte mega-dam in Pará state has done significant socio environmental harm to the Xingu River and the indigenous and traditional people living beside it. Climate change-induced droughts are also decreasing Xingu River flows and generating capacity.
Is the Amazon River dammed?
Although the Amazon river remains undammed, around 412 dams are in operation in the Amazon’s tributary rivers. From these 412 dams, 151 are constructed over six of the main tributary rivers that drain into the Amazon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lpf9cDpx-gI
