Neither 11th-hour legal challenges nor protests of opponents ranging from rainforest indigenous leaders to U.S. film director James Cameron could halt the auction. As scheduled, Brazil this month awarded a concession to build the world’s third largest hydroelectric complex—the planned US$11.2 billion, 11,233-megawatt Belo Monte power station—on the Amazon region’s Xingu River. The auction marked yet another major step forward for a project that for two decades has sparked enormous controversy on environmental, economic and social grounds. That controversy spiked in recent weeks as critics of the project took to the media and the courts in an attempt to head off the auction. The most immediately consequential fight took place in the courts, where public prosecutors this month filed a... [Log in to read more]