Ribeirinhos do Xingu run out of fish after Belo Monte, and Ibama wants reparations

Andrelino do Nascimento, 46, had his identification card canceled as a fisherman, he became intoxicated while taking care of the cocoa plantation and owes R$ 10,000 in unpayable electricity bills.

In the house of Raimundo Gomes, 59, the TV, stereo, freezer and microwave are cut off. While he waits for resettlement, he receives R$900 a month — and loses his health day by day.

Josiel Juruna, 29, is increasingly abandoning fish with flour, characteristic of the diet of the Juruna people in the Paquiçamba Indigenous Land. Instead, mortadella and instant noodles come in.

The large family of Raimundo Martins, 58, also eats a lot more bologna and eggs, and a lot less fish. The children no longer spend their days on the Xingu River, but on daily service to farmers in the region.

Andrelino, Josiel and the two Raimundos have in common the fact that they are fishermen without fish to catch. The operation of the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant, in the region of Volta Grande do Xingu, in Pará, killed the river, as these fishermen see every day.

There is no more fish breeding, faced with artificial flow control — and insufficient water release.

Six years after it started operating, and three years after all its generating units began to operate, Belo Monte imposed a radical change in the lives of thousands of people who had routines and way of situating themselves in the world associated with the biological wealth of the river. Xingu.

There is no longer any sign of plenty. The hydrograph adopted — the flow of water released from the dam for the operation of the plant — is insufficient for subsistence fishing, and the fishermen have not adapted to other activities, such as cocoa plantation or fish farming in ponds. Thus, families have become impoverished and live in food insecurity.

The observation was made by Sheet in the communities directly impacted by the plant, the largest hydroelectric plant in exclusively Brazilian territory, in terms of energy generation capacity — even though it only met 5% of national demand in 2021.

The reality found by the report coincides with what is described in an official document, more specifically a technical opinion from IBAMA (Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) of June 24 this year.

The 181-page opinion analyzes whether Norte Energia —the company that brings together several companies and is responsible for operating Belo Monte— meets the conditions established for the plant to operate. Among them is the need to mitigate the effects of damming, the formation of reservoirs and the control of water flow in the lives of fishermen.

Belo Monte had the first feasibility studies prepared during the military dictatorship, in the 1970s. The Lula government (PT) made the first licenses possible, and the works were carried out under the Dilma Rousseff (PT) government. In the first year of his term, the Jair Bolsonaro (PL) government completed the generating units and inaugurated the complete set.

During the campaign in these elections, Lula said that he would do Belo Monte again and that only a third of the original project was put into practice under the PT administration, which reduced the impacts.

The dam affected dozens of riverside communities and indigenous lands in the middle Xingu region. Ibama, in its opinion in June, concluded that fishermen need to receive compensation in cash due to “periods of delay and interruptions in mitigation actions”.

The compensation must refer to a period of two years and two months and initially reach 785 families.

Members of the MPF (Federal Public Ministry) in Altamira (PA) estimate that more than 4,000 fishermen were impacted by the plant. The account includes the riverside communities where they lived, the indigenous lands and the urban and rural resettlements created to house those displaced by the project.

Belo Monte has been operating, since November 25, 2021, with an operating license that has expired. The renewal is the responsibility of Ibama, whose technical team conditioned the renewal to the presentation of a proposal for compensation in money to the fishermen, within a period of 60 days.

Norte Energia, which has Eletrobras, Petros, Funcef, Neoenergia, Vale, Sinobras, Light, Cemig and J. Malucelli Energia in its shareholding composition, says it considers, in turn, that the plant’s operating license is in force, under the terms of the law, until Ibama decides on the renewal request.

In reply to Sheet, Norte Energia also stated that the fishermen preferred compensation rather than “productive projects”. This demand was made by workers at a public hearing held by the MPF in August.

“The request was registered by Norte Energia and is under internal analysis”, says the company. “Mitigation and repair actions are those aimed at organizing and strengthening the groups served, seeking to favor actions to support the maintenance of activities in a sustainable way. The new proposal will be submitted to Ibama and to the category of fishermen.”

The IBAMA opinion describes a multitude of consequences of the river becoming ill by Belo Monte. The giant otters are out of fish and are competing with otters for food. The sex ratio of tracajás was altered, with a predominance of females. Turtles are smaller. From 2012 to 2021, 41 tons of lifeless fish were taken from the river.

“Local fishing, in any of the modalities, has been going through a process of degradation”, say IBAMA technicians in the opinion. “This phenomenon has been eroding the ability of fishermen to generate satisfactory economic income through their activity, as well as to obtain fish as the main source of animal protein at the table of their families.”

On Itapiranga Island, there was an abundance of fish, remember Andrelino and his wife, Adriana Ribeiro da Silva, 36. “In three days, there were six boxes of fish where we lived. Yesterday, here, we went out to fish and came back with three curimatás”, she says.

Removed from their home with the information that the place was going to “sink”, the couple and their four children were taken to a house in a rural area, close to the banks of the Xingu River. They try to keep fishing as a source of livelihood, but that no longer guarantees anything.

They resorted to cocoa plantations, but with a lack of experience and technique, of the 3,000 plants, 1,000 remained, and Andrelino became intoxicated with the poison used to kill the grass.

The banana didn’t make it either. “We are fishermen, not farmers,” she says.

The family is in debt and sees no way out. Andrelino and Adriana take medication for depression, a disease they have been living with since 2014. “I feel disgust for this plant. We used to live so well. Now we live worse than dogs”, she says.

Raimundo Gomes also left the edge of the Xingu where he lived with his family, in 2012, 35 years after arriving at the place called Costa Júnior. “I was expelled. I had my property burned.”

The fisherman was taken to a house on the outskirts of Altamira, in one of the RUCs (urban collective resettlements) created to house those displaced by Belo Monte. Raimundo is waiting for resettlement in a place close to the river that will guarantee him the possibility of being a fisherman. In the meantime, he receives a monthly allowance of R$900.

“I dream about it. But I’m discrediting it. They need to expropriate areas from powerful farmers”, says the fisherman, who is facing the consequences of a stroke, Parkinson’s disease and depression.

He lives alone in the RUC. The daughters looked for other directions. This year, he still hasn’t gone fishing. “If I tell my life, I tell my neighbor’s life. We lost the river.”

In the Paquiçamba Indigenous Land, the indigenous people abandoned traditional diving in search of ornamental fish. They no longer find the previously usual species.

The decisive factor for them to give up diving was the death of Josiel Juruna’s brother. He says that his brother started diving in deeper waters, in view of the disappearance of species. One day, he did not return to the surface. It was a trauma for all the villages.

The Jurunas try to increase their income with fish ponds. The activity, however, has shown little success so far.

“The solution is more water, it’s no use. This would guarantee the reproduction of the fish, and we would have our food back”, says Josiel, responsible for an independent measurement of the river level and the reproduction of fish in the indigenous land.

“It was normal for the river to fill in November, December, and the fish arrived from January to March for reproduction. Now, with the flow adopted, the river does not fill enough from November to February. When enough water arrives, in April, it is already it’s not the right breeding season”, he summarizes.

Raimundo Martins, who had to leave one of the first villages in the Xingu evicted by the Belo Monte project, Santo Antônio, agrees. “The river is gone. There’s no more. The spawning is all over, there’s nowhere for the fish to spawn.”

He, his wife and seven children went to a community closer to the river, Bambu. They still fish, but there is not enough fish for everyone.

That’s why a group of fishermen from the village of Belo Monte, the village from which the plant’s name was taken, advocates a rest for the river, to see if it can be reborn. While they do not fish, a reparation allowance would compensate for the relief to the Xingu, defend Sara Rodrigues, 38, and her father, Valeriano Rodrigues, 64.

Sara, Valeriano and family still insist on fishing. They leave by boat through Volta Grande and, given the lack of water in dry periods, they have to drag and slide the boat over boulders. Because they had to move the vessel in this way, Norte Energia started to pay riverside and indigenous people for this exclusive purpose.

This stage lasts from three to four hours per rapid. To try to catch something, it takes two days.

“Before, it wasn’t like that, even in the driest periods”, says Sara. “We haven’t known what a piracema is for seven years.”

Regarding the amount of water destined for the Volta Grande do Xingu, Norte Energia states that this was the object of study and forecast in the environmental licensing.

“The alternation of flows that simulate the natural pulse of the Xingu River was established, in order to ensure the maintenance of water quality, conservation of ichthyofauna, alluvial vegetation, turtles, fishing and navigation, in addition to the ways of life of the population in the region”, he says.

The company says that “it strictly complies with the commitments established within the scope of the concession and environmental licensing”. Periodic reports sent to Ibama show this, according to Norte Energia. IBAMA did not respond to questions in the report.

Norte Energia also claims to be transparent in its information to IBAMA on fish mortality. Also according to the company, the rate of fish consumption by riverine people is above the national and world averages, and an increase in income led to an elevation of families to the line above poverty.

The family resettlement process is underway, and 121 have already been resettled, according to the response to the report.

“Norte Energia provided technical assistance to psychculture projects, strengthening fishing, cocoa farming, plant extractivism”, he says.

_{The Planeta em Transe project is supported by the Open Society Foundations.}