Tucuruí Dam

"We do not need electricity. Electricity is not going to give us our food. We need our rivers to flow freely. Our future depends on it. We need our jungles for hunting and gathering. We do not need your dam." —Tuira Kayapó, indigenous activist, 2009 The Tucuruí Dam was the first major dam constructed on a large river in the Amazon and remains the largest dam ever built in a tropical rainforest. The vast reservoir created by the dam is contributing one-sixth of Brazil's total greenhouse gas emissions, due to submerged decomposing vegetation. “Tucuruí Dam was constructed without any major study of the potential effects on migratory fish species or of its impact beyond the immediate region of the impoundment... Most changes have occurred downstream of Tocuruí Dam, where catfish and shrimp fisheries have declined.... Tucuruí Dam should have served as an example of the need for adequate environmental impact studies prior to dam construction in the Amazon Basin. In retrospect it appears to have done no such thing: federal and state governments still do not require adequate environmental impact studies before dams are constructed.”