Amazon dams and waterways: Brazil's Tapajs Basin plans

Brazil plans to build 43 large dams (> 30 MW) in the Tapajs Basin, ten of which are priorities for completion by 2022. Impacts include flooding indigenous lands and conservation units. The Tapajs River and two tributaries (the Juruena and Teles Pires Rivers) are also the focus of plans for waterways to transport soybeans from Mato Grosso to ports on the Amazon River. Dams would allow barges to pass rapids and waterfalls. The waterway plans require dams in a continuous chain, including the Chacoro Dam that would flood 18 700 ha of the Munduruku Indigenous Land. Protections in Brazil's constitution and legislation and in international conventions are easily neutralized through application of security suspensions, as has already occurred during licensing of several dams currently under construction in the Tapajs Basin. Few are aware of security suspensions, resulting in little impetus to change these laws.