Amazon Rainforest Group Defeats Hydropower Project

In a major victory for indigenous people in the Amazon rainforest, the Brazilian company Odebrecht abandoned plans to build a hydropower project in Peru. The voluntary decision came after opposition by the 14,000-member Ashaninka community, which said its forests and farmlands would be destroyed by the proposed Tambo-40 plant.

Commercial enterprises rarely take such initiatives on their own, according to the Sept. 20, 2011, CQ Global Researcher, “Saving Indigenous Peoples.” The report describes widespread encroachment into indigenous territories around the globe by governments and multinational corporations pursuing energy extraction, despite international agreements to first obtain consent from indigenous populations. Brazil’s planned Belo Monte Dam in the Amazon and Bolivia’s proposed hydropower plant in the Madidi National Park are prime examples. Bolivian President Evo Morales, the nation’s first indigenous president and a champion of indigenous rights, has been accused of “reprehensible incoherence” for riding roughshod over the concerns of Madidi indigenous groups to make way for the plant.

See the report at http://library.cqpress.com/globalresearcher/cqrglobal2011092000.

--Brian Beary