Amazon Basin

Vaupés River, Colombian Amazon (Aguirre/Switkes/AMAZONIA)

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The Amazon Basin, home to sixty percent of the planet’s remaining tropical rainforests, is an immense region nearly the size of the continental United States. The Amazon´s incredible biodiversity is well-known, and new research confirms the critical role it plays in regulating the climate not only of South America, but also of parts of North America as well.

Increasingly, the Amazon Basin is being targeted for large dam projects - already more than 4,000 sq mi of the Brazilian Amazon has been flooded by dams. Two–thirds of Brazil’s remaining hydroelectric potential is found on the rivers of the Amazon basin, and more than 100 large dams are being planned, which would affect the Amazon’s fragile web of aquatic and terrestrial life, as well as displacing indigenous and river bank communities.

Roughly 83% of the Amazon rainforest is still intact, and a principal factor in the Amazon’s survival has been its remoteness. But now a series of large–scale industrial developments threaten to transform the Amazon into a center for extraction of raw materials for export. To fuel these developments, construction companies, hydropower utilities, and agribusiness are planning to convert the Amazon’s greatest tributaries into a series of slack-water reservoirs. Once built, these dams would provide the power and transport needed to move large quantities of resources out of the Amazon—and accelerate its destruction. Many of these projects form part of the Initiative for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America (IIRSA), a program supported by international financial institutions which regards the vast natural areas of the continent as obstacles to "development".

International Rivers is working with environmentalists, social movements, and indigenous people to fight dams planned for the Amazon, and to promote dialogue about the value of undammed rivers in the rainforest.

Some Key Amazon Dam Projects

Santo Antônio and Jirau dams are being planned for the Madeira, the principal tributary of the Amazon.

The Xingu hydroelectric complex has been on the drawing board since the 1970s, but only recently has there been a renewed effort by Brazil’s electric sector to build Belo Monte Dam, which would be the world's third largest.

The Araguaia and Tocantins rivers, which empty near the mouth of the Amazon, are targeted for dozens of large dams.