Brazil’s hydropower test in a parched Amazon

🌐 From location on the Xingu River, a new twist on a long-running controversy.

FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK

WorldWise readers—

Somewhere between this week’s World Earth Day, the forthcoming COP30 climate summit and the push for a clean energy transition: today’s newsletter is a special edition dedicated to a story I’ve followed since visiting the Indigenous territory at its centre, in Brazil’s Pará state. The piece was published earlier this month—read on for an overview and some bonus material.

Anita

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Reduced water levels on the Volta Grande © anita makri

Water for power or life on the river?

“Yudjá means ‘owners of the river’, so we consider this river to be ours. This river is ours.”

Giliarde Juruna is chief of Muratu, a village of the Yudjá people on the Xingu River, one of the largest tributaries in the Brazilian Amazon—photographed here just after dawn against the waterfalls and rapids of Jericoá, a sacred site the Indigenous group consider a spiritual home.

Giliarde Juruna, chief of the Yudjá village of Muratu © anita makri

The waterfall forms a natural border that has, historically, served to protect the Yudjá (also known as Juruna) and their land from invaders.

But some threats come in a different guise.

It’s over two years since my visit to the group’s territory around the Volta Grande or ‘Big Bend’ of the Xingu, a global biodiversity hotspot. The idea was to witness first-hand the local resistance against the Belo Monte mega-dam, which years ago laid claim to the water running through the area. I met a coalition of Yudjá people, ribeirinhos (river-dwellers), scientists and NGO workers committed to a long fight against a hydroelectric complex built with a promise of energy security for Brazil.

The resistance continues, and this month my feature for Yale Environment 360 delves into the difficult trade-offs at the core of a dispute stuck at a crucial decision point.

Why write about this now? Two developments:

One, the Amazon River hit record low levels in 2023 and 2024. At current trends, water levels on the Xingu are set to decline even further. This threatens both river health and power generation capacity—a reality in other parts of the world that rely on hydroelectricity too.

Two, Brazil is preparing to host this year’s COP30 climate summit while presiding over the BRICS bloc, just after a two-year term leading the G20. As Lula’s government asserts a leading role on the world stage, the long-running controversy around Belo Monte is testing how the country balances energy security, nature protection and Indigenous rights.

Thanks go out to Yale E360 for assigning the piece and Elizabeth Royte for the sharp editorial eye. Grateful to Giliarde Juruna, Sara Rodrigues, André Oliveira Sawakuchi, Felício Pontes Jr., Ricardo Baitelo for their input and insights—and many others behind the scenes, without whose support and knowledge the work just wouldn’t be possible.

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A visual journey along the Xingu River, and through the story

The local struggle against the mega-dam began with decisions about energy security made decades ago, far from this corner of the Amazon.

Belo Monte feeds into the national electricity grid. Even without operating at full capacity, the dam generates energy for some 60 million people in the country’s south, including cities like Rio de Janeiro.

Over the years Brazil has earned praise for developing one of the world’s cleanest power grids, a strategy that comes with a long-term commitment to hydroelectricity and aspirations for a clean energy transition.

In Latin America and beyond, hydropower still counts as sustainable energy: governments and global institutions continue to support often-contested mega-dams.

But zoom down to the Xingu, and the clean image comes into question.

(All images © anita makri)

To build Belo Monte, engineers diverted much of the Xingu’s flow to power turbines through an artificial canal, flooding just under 50,000 acres of land and displacing an estimated 40,000 people upstream. The bare treetops spiking through the water are “like a cemetery”, campaigners say. Further downstream, an expanse of water soon gives way to the orderly concrete slabs of Pimental, the main dam in the hydroelectric complex. This is where the river is ‘cut’ in two.

When the dam flooded land upstream, it also severely lowered river levels along the Volta Grande, or Big Bend, of the Xingu — an 80-mile stretch that is a global biodiversity hotspot. Fish stocks dropped by up to 80%. Fish and turtle species that communities rely on for food can no longer survive. Ebbs and flows that once moved to a natural pulse are now dictated by the dam, breaking a cycle that sustains aquatic ecosystems and unraveling an entire way of life.

The people of the Volta Grande have always fought the dam—but now, with its operating licence up for renewal since 2022, they’re seizing a rare opportunity to reclaim the river. Relicensing hinges on deciding technical rules that govern how much water powers the dam and how much is left for downstream communities. A research coalition of scientists, NGO workers, Yudjá and river dwellers have offered the government their own technical proposal, put together based on years’ worth of monitoring data on ecological conditions, including the size and weight of key fish and turtle species.

Sara Rordigues is a fisherwoman born and raised in the Volta Grande. There was no mistaking the emotion in her gaze when she looked me straight in the eye to explain what the dam has meant for life on the river. But as long as relicensing remains in limbo, Belo Monte is allowed to operate indefinitely—the story reports on some things we know about the government's decision, and a few that we don't. The Yudjá and ribeirinhos know life in their part of the Xingu will never be the same again. Their goal is to save what’s left of it. Giliarde Juruna holds firm on the ancestral belief that survival on the river goes hand in hand with keeping the environment intact.

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Thank you.

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Created and edited by Anita Makri—journalist/writer, producer and editorial adviser covering global development and science in society. I also help selected organisations with compatible values to strengthen their media work. LinkedIn | Instagram | Email

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