Flooded Development, Democracy, and Brazil’s Belo Monte Dam

Peter Taylor Klein

“

Flooded addresses the overarching question of how developing states can build critical infrastructure in a way that respects local rights and grants signi cant participation to those affected by the project.”

—Kathryn Hochstetler, co-author of Greening Brazil: Environmental Activism in State and Society

“

Flooded compellingly shows the dilemmas of ‘democratic development’ and the challenges posed by the increasing demand for energy at a time of climate crisis. Klein offers a thought-provoking and engaging narrative that highlights the ambivalences and contradictions of progressive governments.”

—Pablo Lapenga, author of Soybeans and Power: Genetically Modi ed Crops, Environmental Politics, and Social Movements in Argentina

In Flooded, environmental sociologist Peter T. Klein provides insights into the little-known effects of democratic developmentalism through a close examination of Brazil’s Belo Monte hydroelectric facility and the con icts over its construction. After a remarkable three decades of controversy over damming the Xingu River, a large tributary of the Amazon River, construction of Belo Monte began in 2011. The dam, rst proposed under Brazil’s military dictatorship, came to fruition under the left-ofcenter Workers’ Party and became the fourth largest hydroelectric facility in the world when it was completed in 2019. Billions of dollars accompanied construction of the dam, supposedly in order to mitigate its negative socio-environmental impacts, bring about local development, and integrate more people into decision-making processes with government of cials. Klein draws on ethnographic research carried out during construction in and around Altamira, the city most affected by Belo Monte, to show how democracy can be at once strengthened and weakened in such a context. By democracy, Klein identi es a set of meaningful, inclusionary, and consequential processes that include but go beyond electoral politics and which encourage the state to respond to citizen demands. Flooded, then, provides a historical backdrop of the region and details the social, environmental, and political upheaval that accompanied this new dam. The population of Altamira nearly doubled within two years of Belo Monte’s groundbreaking, which led to a skyrocketing cost of living, a rise in violence, increased pollution, and a strain on already overextended resources.

PETER TAYLOR KLEIN is an assistant professor of sociology and environmental and urban studies at Bard College in Annandale-onHudson, New York. He is the co-author of The Civic Imagination: Making a Difference in American Political Life

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