By Beatrice Jeschek

Sigourney Weaver in "Defending the Rivers of the Amazon"

Actress Sigourney Weaver fights for the maintenance of the Amazon. In a Google Earth 3-D Tour inspired by director James Cameron the actress gives a voice-over considering risks and alternatives for the planned Belo Monte Dam in Northern Brazil.


The Amazon: Inspiration for natural admirers, dream source for adventure-horror movies and supplier of one-fifths of all free-flowing fresh water on earth. Brazil’s government sees even more than that – energy for about 23 million homes.

The Belo Monte Dam at the Amazon’s Xingu River promises to be the third biggest dam in the world. It is supposed to have huge influence, both on generating energy as well as living conditions for those connected to the river.

Video screenshot: Animated Dam

It is a clash between Brazil’s government bonding with the hydro-industrial lobby and environmental and social activists supporting the country’s indigenous people around the Amazon.

The video explains how the hydroelectric dam in order to produce electricity (around 11.000 megawatts) would destroy 500 square kilometers of agriculture and rainforest. This would change the life of 20.000 people and animal species living in symbiosis with the Amazon’s Xingu River.

According to Amazon Watch (a non-profit organization to protect the rainforest and its people) and International Rivers (a charity supporting tribal people worldwide) multiple species and at least seven tribes would be endangered if the project will be realized. “Other migratory species like the white-blotched river sting ray and numerous turtle species will also lose access to their breeding grounds”, Weaver says.

Video screenshot: Turtle species in danger to lose breeding grounds

Deforestation linked to dam construction would also drastically alter the habitat of near-to-extinction species like the Black Bearded Saki monkey, Weaver explains further.

Video screenshot: Black Bearded Saki monkey

Brazil’s need for energy will rise drastically. This is a mathematical certainty. The country’s politicians focus on the sufficient solution right at their doorstep. Do they have other options? Solar and wind energy are considered to be softer and more efficient alternatives to the Belo Monte Dam.

According to Phillip Fearnside, professor at the Department of Ecology at the National Institute for Research in the Amazon, in Manaus, Brazil, the dam's construction will release carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to those of two million cars.

At the end of August, after 20 years of shifting opposite ideas, Brazil’s president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva buried all legal obstacles and gave green light (aka 17 billion US Dollars) to Norte Energia, the consortium hired to build the hydropower plant. Another 60 dams are planned within the next 20 years.

Now it lies in the hands of activists to change the result. Sigourney Weaver makes it clear that she will not give up.

Info: There is the possibility to sign a petition to stop the Belo Monte Dam. It will be personally delivered by James Cameron et al. to key Brazilian government officials: bit.ly/stopbelomonte

See the video below:

This article was first published 02/09/2010 on maltastar.com.