QUEIMADA NOVA, Brazil (news agencies) — Cousins Nilson José dos Santos and Geremias da Cruz dos Anjos grew up together in neighboring rural communities in Brazil’s impoverished Northeast. The ruggedness of the land here and recurring drought make it unsuitable for the commercial farming that has transformed so much of the country. Yet energy companies have found something here to harvest: the wind.
The changes to the land have been dramatic. Enel Green Power, an Italian energy company, has put up one of Latin America’s largest wind farms, with 372 turbines, investing more than $1.4 billion.
The cousins have had vastly different experiences with the development — one very good, one very bad — offering a glimpse into wind company practices that are leading to increasing resistance to this kind of clean power in the country. Brazil has rapidly become the world’s fifth largest wind power producer.
Dos Santos’ community, Sumidouro, is a formally-recognized quilombo, a community of descendants of Afro-Brazilian runaway slaves. He was part of winning this recognition from the government. In a way, that effort, which resulted in land ownership, prepared him and his neighbors to deal with the energy companies. Land title in hand, they demanded negotiations and managed to keep the turbines at a distance. Sumidouro’s last house, which belongs to farmer João de Souza Silva, is 1.6 kilometers (1 mile) away from the first windmill.
Dos Santos wants the world to understand that the community is not against energy development; people just want to be involved in the process. “We worked to build a protective cocoon so that we would be less vulnerable to these big projects,” he said during an interview with media.
They also negotiated something crucial: running water. Dos Santos’ house is at the end of a narrow, dirt road. He recalls fetching water at age 10, riding a donkey two miles to a spring to fill wooden barrels. Too small to lift them alone, he would wait until someone came to help. At 13, he was doing it by himself.
Now the 48 families in his community are connected to a community water system, thanks to agreements with Enel and two transmission companies.
“Everyone can turn on their tap and get water,” dos Santos said.
Past the scattering of simple houses with fruit trees and roaming goats that make up the community, other improvements are visible. There is a sports court, a cultural and community center and a shed for farm equipment.
Native plants, known here as caatinga, were cut down to make way for the transmission lines that bring electricity from the wind farm to where it is needed. In exchange for this loss of vegetation, Sumidouro also secured money for research on breeding goats — the livestock most apt for this semi-arid climate — and for bees to make honey.
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