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In eight decades constructing hydroelectric plants and mining operations, the country has accumulated 22 thousand registered dams — and over four million Brazilians have been affected by them. The National Policy on the Rights of Dam-Affected Populations, approved in 2024 after more than three decades of struggle, has not yet been regulated.
Published on March 11, 2026, by Brasil de Fato, a survey by the Movement of Dam-Affected People (MAB) reveals a little-known number.
According to the movement, between 1940 and 2022, over four million people were affected by dam constructions and ruptures in the country.
As recorded in the document, this total came from research analyzed by the movement itself, which has been organizing affected people for 35 years.
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Therefore, the entity treats the data as the probable floor — and not the ceiling.
According to an interview with Agência Pública, the national coordinator confirmed another public data point: “today, in Brazil, we have about 22 thousand dams”.
About 70% of them serve the energy sector.
For comparison, the portal has already shown how Belo Monte completed ten years still surrounded by lawsuits and social criticism.
Therefore, the scenario described by the movement unites two scales that rarely appear together in the press.
On one hand, an immense infrastructure that supports the electricity grid. On the other, millions of people who lost their homes, farms, or rivers.
It all began in the 1970s — when no one listened to the affected
The movement organized itself at the end of the 1970s, according to the entity’s own records.
During that period, Brazil was under a military dictatorship and undertaking gigantic works such as the Itaipu Hydroelectric Plant.
As a result, entire families were removed from riverbanks without adequate compensation.
Consequently, local committees emerged which later became a national movement.
Subsequently, on March 14, 1991, the first National Congress marked the official founding of MAB, as recorded by Agência Pública.
Thirty-five years later, the movement is present in twenty Brazilian states and maintains continuous activity.
As a MAB representative defined to Agência Pública: “It is a process where the affected are subjects of their own construction of the process of formation, organization, and struggle”.
Mariana changed the struggle — and opened a new front against mining
On November 5, 2015, the rupture of the Fundão dam, in Mariana (MG), affected Bento Rodrigues and Paracatu de Baixo.
The tailings mud flowed down the Doce River and reached the sea — an unprecedented episode in the country until then.
After this disaster, MAB’s struggle gained a new layer.
Previously, the movement focused on electricity generation dams. From 2015 onwards, it also began to address mining.
As an activist quoted by Brasil de Fato in 2024 summarized: “If in the beginning the struggle was against construction, today we deal with mining dam ruptures and lack of reparation.”
The PNAB has existed since 2024 — but it’s still not off the ground
MAB’s main demand over decades was simple: a national law that recognized affected people as subjects of rights.
This objective was achieved in 2024 with the sanction of the National Policy on the Rights of Dam-Affected Populations, known by the acronym PNAB.
In fact, the text had passed through the Chamber in 2022, still during the tenure of Jacques Wagner (PT-BA) as president of the Senate’s Environment Committee.
From there, it proceeded to sanction. The celebration came in April 2024, when the movement completed thirty-three years.
However, two years after its approval, the law remains without effective regulation.
Without the decree that defines how the state will operate the policy, affected people cannot access resettlement, compensation, or formal participation in reconstruction.
Therefore, the movement organized the National Day of Struggles from March 11 to 14, 2026, with about fifty activities in twenty states.
The main agenda item was the regulation of the PNAB.
This roadmap recalls another recent case, when communities in the Northeast demanded regulation of wind farms — another area of the energy sector that advanced rapidly without clear legal backing.
Rio Grande do Sul: two years after the floods, still without a home
The most visible case of inaction is in Rio Grande do Sul.
On April 27, 2026, the official
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