MOVEMENT OF PEOPLE
AFFECTED BY DAMS

The negative health and environmental consequences of large-scale hydroelectric dams are often hidden, except to those communities who are affected the most. Though hailed as a key to clean energy and a catalyst for economic development, the disruption of ecosystems, displacement of local communities and wildlife, and destruction of cultural heritage sites all indicate that the construction and operation of these dams are harmful to the communities in which they are built. Furthermore, tailings dams, which are built to permanently store solid, liquid, and/or slurry by-products of metallic and mineral mining, bring enormous environemental hazards to local communities. The by-products stored in tailings dams are often toxic and can even be radioactive. Thousands of such structures have been built around the world, and, even with a minimal failure rate, the results of a dam breaking are catastrophically fatal. In just the past decade alone, Brazil has experienced two of the most extensive failures of tailings dams in the world, both associated with iron ore mining operations owned by the Brazilian multinational corporation, Vale S.A.  Communities standing in opposition to these threats have come together to organize and protest the construction of new dams. The organization Movement of People Affected by Dams (MAB) is one such network of communities that both resists the environmental injustices wrought by hydroelectric and tailings dam projects and seeks alternatives to the capitalist commodification of water and energy through popular energy projects. The  videos below are all produced by MAB with the aim of raising consciousness and promoting solidarity in the struggle against extractivist dam construction.