Indigenous

Mesoamerica

Hundreds of large dams are being planned, with very little transparency, threatening to destroy the rivers of Central America and Mexico, along with the economies of communities that rely on these rivers for their livelihood. The dams would impact fish stocks and coastal ecosystems, wetlands and mangroves that contain many plant and animal species, some still undiscovered.

Background on Epupa Falls

Monday, September 1, 1997
Updated 2005 Download this fact sheet (PDF, 190 KB)Namibia's Kunene River valley is the ancestral home of 12,000 Himba people, a semi-nomadic people who have lived there for more than 500 years, tending their flocks and making their sacred fires (okuruwo). After surviving drought, war, genocide and other disasters, the most serious threat to their existence is the proposed Epupa Dam. The dam would flood their remote oasis; bring roads, construction camps and development into their midst; introduce diseases common to the still waters of reservoirs, and potentially end the Himba way of life fo

Xingu River

The Xingu River flows from the tropical savanna of central Mato Grosso, Brazil northward to the Amazon for 1,979 km (1,230 miles). Some 25,000 indigenous people from 18 distinct ethnic groups live along the Xingu. In 1989, an international mobilization led by the Kayapó Indians stopped state-owned electric company Eletronorte´s plans to construct a six-dam complex on the Xingu and its tributary, the Iriri. Map of the Rivers of the Amazon Wikipedia Commons In 2016, Brazil completed construction of a huge dam on the Xingu River, called Belo Monte. Belo Monte will be the third-largest hydroel

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