Social participation in the processes of installation of hydroelectric power plants in the Paraguay River Hydrographic Region in Brazil: advances and contradictions. (in Portuguese)

In the Brazilian part of the Paraguay Basin, called the Hydrographic Region of Paraguay,
which comprises the Pantanal floodplain, almost 50 hydroelectric plants have already
been built and about 133 are still planned, totaling more than 180 projects. Dams on
the Pantanal’s rivers is a serious threat to the conservation of the ecological processes
of the biome, especially to the pulses of annual and multi-year floods and droughts,
altering the dynamics of water, preventing the reproductive migration of various species
of fish of ecological, cultural and socioeconomic importance and promoting dynamic
changes in nutrients and sediments. In Mato Grosso State, civil society participates in
collegiate bodies for monitoring and management of water resources in seven River
Basin Committees (RBC) and the Water Resource State Council (WRSC). This study
aimed to analyze social participation in the different stages that precede the installation
of hydroelectric plants and WRSC and RBCs, identifying contradictions and advances in
social participation. In the inventory phase, social participation is almost non-existent,
even with legal forecast. One of the advances observed was the creation of the Socio-
Environmental Register for the communities that will be affected by the hydroelectric
plants. In the process of environmental licensing of hydroelectric plants, social

participation is also flawed, particularly regarding discussions in the RBC. In RBC and

WRSC the representation of civil society and indigenous and traditional communities

is low, conflicts are little questioned or debated, especially regarding the environmental

and social impacts of hydroelectric power plants.