On April 3, 2025, the High Meadows Environmental Institute (HMEI), PLAS, and Brazil LAB co-hosted the event “Book Talk: Hydropower in Authoritarian Brazil: An Environmental History of Low-Carbon Energy, 1960s-90s” featuring Matthew P. Johnson (Environmental Fellow, HMEI) in conversation with Vera Candiani (Department of History) and Miqueias Mugge (Brazil LAB).

Johnson opened the event with a 30 minute presentation about his recently published book Hydropower in Authoritarian Brazil, which tells the story of the Brazilian military dictatorship’s hydropower dams and their social and environmental impacts. Johnson’s presentation elaborated on how he came to the topic and its significance, which includes, in the context of the climate crisis, the fact that Brazil is in an exceptional position for having a massive electricity grid powered primarily by low-carbon energy. Johnson argues that the country’s experience in dealing with the many other social and environmental tradeoffs that these energy projects entailed offers valuable lessons for a world in the throes of a major low-carbon energy transition. The rest of his presentation offered a short overview of the book’s contents, which covers, sequentially, the military regime’s economic and political motivations for building big dams with few social and environmental safeguards; its tepid efforts to mitigate the dams’ footprints; and the resulting impacts and reactions to them.

Johnson’s presentation was followed by insightful comments and discussion by both Vera and Miqueias concerning, among other topics, the unequal distribution of the dam-building boom’s costs and benefits; its monumentality; the dam-building-related continuities and ruptures between the military regime and the civilian governments that preceded and followed; and the exceptional features of the Itaipu Dam, which include having its origins in a geopolitical dispute overcome through international cooperation and being a source of tremendous national pride.