On Friday I heard from our colleagues at Amazon Watch that a Brazilian federal court had issued an order suspending plans to build the Belo Monte dam [2], a massive project that is intended to be the third-largest dam in the world and is likely to disrupt critical Amazonian waterways and threaten the survival of indigenous groups.  The judge apparently found that the requirements of environmental law had not been met.

Amazon Watch has been campaigning on the Belo Monte dam for quite some time, and their website [3] has a wealth of information about the project and the campaign to stop it.  Personally I'm pleased to see judges in the Amazon region taking environmental law seriously and not simply bowing to powerful interests, first with the Chevron judgment in Ecuador earlier this month [4], and now with the latest ruling on the Belo Monte dam.