Innovations in Dam Governance: Participatory Development in the Brazilian Amazon

• In Event: 393 - Section on Sociology of Development Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 05. Governance, Bureaucracy and the State

Abstract

Brazil’s controversial Belo Monte hydroelectric facility, which will be the world’s third largest dam when completed in 2019, represents the country’s contemporary form of development policy that seeks to utilize infrastructure projects to drive economic growth while doing so in sustainable and democratic ways. Past dam projects around the world have resulted in well-documented negative socioenvironmental effects, but the Brazilian government argues that it can and will build dams differently in the current era, protecting the environment, bettering residents’ lives through social programs, and utilizing participatory governance to make decisions about development. One of the innovative ways the federal government is attempting to back up this discourse is through the use of a participatory forum designed to mitigate the negative effects of the dam’s construction and bring sustainable development to the region. Since construction started in 2011, the Steering Committee for the Regional Sustainable Development Plan of the Xingu (CGDEX) has brought regional civil society representatives and officials from municipal, state, and federal governments together on a monthly basis to allocate approximately USD 250 million for sustainable development projects.

This paper draws on an ethnographic study carried out in Altamira, the city most affected by Belo Monte, during the first two years of construction to show the possibilities and challenges of this new participatory forum. Through a close examination of the practices and discourses in and about CGDEX, we can see the ambiguities and contradictions of infrastructure-driven sustainable development that is common around the world in the contemporary moment.

Author

• Peter Taylor Klein, Bard College