topic: Climate Change and Dams

topic: Climate Change and Dams

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Hydropower in doubt as climate impacts Mekong Basin water availability
- Warmer and drier wet seasons in the upper basin of the Mekong River are affecting the availability of water for hydropower generation along the major watercourse, according to a new analysis.
- At a recent online discussion, regional experts questioned the viability of hydropower on the Mekong as a long-term, sustainable energy solution, given the increasing presence of climate risks.
- With large-scale dams in upper parts of the basin failing to fill their reservoirs, panelists at the event asked whether they are truly worth their documented impacts on downstream ecosystems, livelihoods and communities.
- Panelists recommended continued information sharing and improved coordination of dam operations to preserve the river’s crucial flood pulse that triggers the seasonal expansion of Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia, and also highlighted the conservation importance of the Tonle Sap watershed, including tributaries in Cambodia’s Cardamom Mountains.

Ahead of polls, Nepal’s political parties, voters take heed of climate impacts
- Climate change will be high on the agenda for voters and political parties alike when Nepal holds its general elections on Nov. 20.
- A recent spate of disasters, from a dengue fever outbreak to flooding, have highlighted the country’s vulnerability to climate change.
- Both the ruling party and the main opposition have for the first time addressed climate change and the related issues of climate change, environment and disaster management in their campaign platforms.
- On the frontline of the impacts, however, citizens are skeptical of getting the help they need, while local authorities say any lofty plans will be undermined by a lack of funds

Podcast: Science that saves free-flowing rivers & rich biodiversity
- Rapid biological surveys are a well-known way to establish the richness of an ecosystem and advocate for its conservation.
- A corps of scientists and conservationists has used such surveys to prove that the rush to build thousands of new hydroelectric dams in southern Europe threatens to drown a rich heritage, with impressive results.
- A proposal to dam one of the last free-flowing rivers in Europe was halted on the basis of one such survey, in addition to much conventional activism, and the group has since turned its focus to other threatened rivers in the region.
- “It might be the highest density of trout species on Earth,” podcast guest Ulrich Eichelmann says of these rivers, which also host a wealth of bugs, bats, birds and beauty — plus a deep cultural heritage.

“Largest of its kind” dam in Cameroon faces backlash from unimpressed fishmongers
- Cameroon is constructing a new 420-megawatt capacity hydroelectric dam in Batchenga, aiming to reduce the country’s significant energy deficit by 30%.
- The massive dam project is impacting several villages where fishing is an essential part of the local economy. Several professional bodies, including fishmongers, fishermen and restaurant owners, have lost their livelihoods due to the dam’s construction.
- Fishmongers in one nearby village, Ndji, are becoming increasingly desperate for proper compensation as the amounts paid by the Nachtigal Hydro Power Company is not enough to make ends meet, they say.
- Civil society organizations are also accusing Nachtigal of seriously violating environmental standards during dam construction, despite the company continuously receiving environmental compliance certificates by the government.

Cambodian mega dam’s resurrection on the Mekong ‘the beginning of the end’
- Cambodian authorities have greenlit studies for a major hydropower dam on the Mekong River in Stung Treng province, despite a ban on dam building on the river that’s been in place since 2020.
- Plans for the 1,400-megawatt Stung Treng dam have been around since 2007, but the project, under various would-be developers, has repeatedly been shelved over criticism of its impacts.
- This time around, the project is being championed by Royal Group, a politically connected conglomerate that was also behind the hugely controversial Lower Sesan 2 dam on a tributary of the Mekong, prompting fears among local communities and experts alike.
- This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network where Gerald Flynn is a fellow.

In the Mekong Basin, an ‘unnecessary’ dam poses an outsized threat
- A dam being built in Laos near the border with Cambodia imperils downstream communities and the Mekong ecosystem as a whole, experts and affected community members say.
- The Sekong A dam will close off the Sekong River by the end of this year, restricting its water flow, blocking vital sediment from reaching the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, and cutting off migration routes for a range of fish species.
- Experts say the energy to be generated by the dam — 86 megawatts — doesn’t justify the negative impacts, calling it “an absolutely unnecessary project.”
- This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network where Gerald Flynn is a fellow.

Climate change hits northern Mexico, as officials look to solve water crisis
- Water scarcity in northern Mexico has gotten worse over the last several years, especially in the state of Nuevo León and its capital city of Monterrey.
- The crisis is a result of a combination of declining rainfall, increasing deforestation of natural aquifers and government mismanagement of climate change readiness policies.
- Officials are investing in new dams and aquifers to address the problem through 2050. They’ve also “bombed” the sky to make it rain and implemented temporary water cutoffs for residents in urban areas.

The world’s dams: Doing major harm but a manageable problem?
- Dam construction is one of the oldest, most preferred tools to manage freshwater for various uses. The practice reached a peak internationally in the 1960s and ’70s, but in recent years dam construction has faced increasing global criticism as the hefty environmental price paid for their benefits piles up.
- The flows of most major waterways have been impacted by dams globally. Only 37% of rivers longer than 1,000 km (620 mi) remain free-flowing, and just 23% flow uninterrupted to the sea. Natural flows will be altered for 93% of river volume worldwide by 2030, if all planned and ongoing hydropower construction goes ahead.
- This global fragmentation of rivers has led to severe impacts. Dams have contributed to an 84% average decline in freshwater wildlife population sizes since 1970. More than a quarter of Earth’s land-to-ocean sediment flux is trapped behind dams. Dams also impact Earth’s climate in complex ways via modification of the carbon cycle.
- But dams are needed for energy, agriculture and drinking water, and are an inevitable part of our future. Lessons on how to balance their benefits against the environmental harm they do are already available to us: removing some existing dams, for example, and not building others.

As climate-driven drought slams farms in U.S. West, water solutions loom
- Drought in the U.S. West has been deepening for two decades, with no end in sight. Unfortunately for farmers, water use policies established in the early 20th century (a time of more plentiful rainfall), have left regulators struggling with their hands tied as they confront climate change challenges — especially intensifying drought.
- However, there is hope, as officials, communities and farmers strive to find innovative ways to save and more fairly share water. In Kansas and California, for example, new legislation has been passed to stave off dangerous groundwater declines threatening these states’ vital agricultural economies.
- Experts say that while an overhaul of the water allocation system in the West is needed, along with a coherent national water policy, extreme measures could be disruptive. But there are opportunities to realize incremental solutions now. Key among them is bridging a gap between federal water programs and farmers.
- A major concern is the trend toward single crop industrial agribusiness in semi-arid regions and the growing of water-intensive crops for export, such as corn and rice, which severely depletes groundwater. Ultimately, 20th century U.S. farm policies will need to yield to flexible 21st century policies that deal with unfolding climate change.

Rivers can be climate change solutions, too (commentary)
- The usual avenues for addressing and adapting to climate change–like protecting forests and ramping up clean energy sources–typically overlook one powerful solution: rivers.
- Rivers and their floodplains have the potential to act as shock absorbers to climate change, and are powerful agents for keeping wildlife and communities healthy and resilient.
- The most effective climate action plans will account for this and incorporate rivers into their plans for a climate-resilient future, argues Michele Thieme, a freshwater scientist at World Wildlife Fund.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Podcast: Are biomass and hydropower ‘false’ climate solutions?
- On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we look at two energy-related technologies that are being promoted as climate solutions, biomass and hydropower, which might have unintended consequences that hamper their ability to supply clean energy and thus might not be sustainable solutions at all.
- Our first guest is Justin Catanoso, a professor at Wake Forest University and long-time Mongabay correspondent. Catanoso tells us about the loopholes in renewable energy policies that have allowed the biomass industry to flourish under the guise of “carbon neutrality,” even though the burning of biomass for energy releases more carbon emissions than burning coal.
- We also speak with Ana Colovic Lesoska, a biologist by training who founded the Eko-Svest Center For Environmental Research in North Macedonia. Colovic Lesoska was instrumental in shutting down two large hydropower projects in her country’s Mavrovo National Park, but there are still more than 3,000 new hydropower projects proposed in the Balkans. She tells us why hydropower is being adopted by Balkan countries and whether or not hydropower can be a climate solution at any scale.

In Brazil, human action and climate change are drowning a community
- In the old seaside resort of Atafona on the coast of Rio de Janeiro, the Atlantic Ocean has been destroying streets, houses and businesses for more than 50 years, claiming at least 500 buildings.
- The damming of the Paraíba do Sul River and destruction of forests along its banks are seen as factors in the river’s silting and throttled water flow, which has allowed the sea to advance up the mouth of the river where Atafona is located.
- According to researchers, climate change is speeding up the rate of coastal erosion through increased frequency and intensity of extreme surges and storms; in Atafona, the sea advances 3 meters (10 feet) a year.
- According to the International Organization for Migration, environmental impacts displaced 295,000 people were in Brazil in 2019; worldwide, the figure exceeds that of displacements caused by internal conflicts.

Communities on Brazil’s ‘River of Unity’ tested by dams, climate change
- The Pixaim Quilombo is one of many traditional communities made up mostly of Afro-Brazilian descendants of runaway slaves. It sits at the mouth of the São Francisco River, one of Brazil’s most important waterways.
- Once a thriving community, it has been struggling for decades due to the impacts of upriver dams which reduce the river’s flow and alter aquatic migrations. As a result, one of the community’s two chief livelihoods has been sharply curtailed — the river’s fishery is in steep decline.
- Now, climate change threatens to make those struggles even greater, further changing fish populations, reducing river flow even more, and dangerously elevating the salinity of the stream as seawater intrudes. Rice, which once provided Paixim’s second major livelihood, can no longer be grown in the delta’s saltier marshes.
- Pixaim is seeing a major outmigration as subsistence livelihoods becomes more difficult. Residents there count among 18 million people residing in the São Francisco River watershed, impacted by a steadily dwindling water resource.

Indonesian dam raises questions about UN hydropower carbon loophole
- North Samatera Hydro Energy (PT NSHE) wants to build the Batang Toru dam, a 510-megawatt project, in Indonesia. But, the discovery of a new primate species, the Tapanuli orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis), with under 800 individuals mostly inhabiting the project site, has alarmed activists and put the dam’s funding at risk.
- PT NSHE is at the COP25 climate summit this month extolling the project’s contribution to curbing global warming: company reps say the dam will reduce Indonesia’s carbon emissions by 4 percent. In fact, the nation is already counting the proposed project as part of its 2015 Paris Climate Agreement carbon reduction pledge.
- However, while the United Nations and Paris Agreement count most new hydroelectric dams as carbon neutral, recent science shows that tropical dams can emit high levels of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide; this especially occurs when reservoirs are first filled.
- Dams built over the next decade will be adding their greenhouse gas emission load to the atmosphere when the world can least afford it — as the world rushes to cut emissions to prevent a 2 degree Celsius increase in global temperatures. PT NSHE argues its dam will have a small reservoir, so will not produce significant emissions.

It’s time for Climate Bonds Initiative to scrap its hydro certification scheme (commentary)
- As world leaders, industry groups, and campaigners converge on Madrid for the climate change COP, the proponents of hydropower are out in full force, keen to profit from and perpetuate the myth of hydropower’s climate benefits.
- The Climate Bonds Initiative (CBI), a UK-based entity established to channel private finance toward addressing climate change, has aligned itself with the influential International Hydropower Association in its eagerness to capitalize on the growing market for climate-certified projects. Yet it has bitten off more than it can chew by attempting to certify hydropower projects, which prompted 276 civil society groups to call for the scheme to be abandoned.
- Climate bonds have the potential to play a critical role in ensuring positive outcomes for rivers and for effectively mitigating climate change. Clinging to its ill-advised pursuit of a hydropower standard, however, would damage the CBI’s own reputation and undermine the credibility of green bonds on the whole.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Amazon’s giant South American river turtle holding its own, but risks abound
- The arrau, or giant South American River turtle (Podocnemis expansa), inhabits the Amazon and Orinoco rivers and their tributaries. A recent six nation survey assessed the health of populations across the region in Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru.
- The species numbered in the tens of millions in the 19th century. Much reduced today, P. expansa is doing fairly well in river systems with conservation programs (the Tapajós, Guaporés, Foz do Amazonas, and Purus) and not so well in others (the Javaés and Baixo Rio Branco, and the Trombetas, even though it has monitoring).
- The study registered more than 147,000 females protected or monitored by 89 conservation initiatives and programs between 2012 and 2014. Out of that total, two thirds were in Brazil (109,400), followed by Bolivia (30,000), Peru (4,100), Colombia (2,400), Venezuela (1,000) and Ecuador (6).
- The greatest historical threat to the arrau stems from eggs and meat being popular delicacies, which has led to trafficking. Hydroelectric dams and large-scale mining operations also put the animals at risk — this includes mining noise impairing turtle communication. Climate change could be the biggest threat in the 21st century.

From flaming to free-flowing: The full lesson of the recovery of the Cuyahoga River (commentary)
- As we approach the 50th anniversary of the fire on the Cuyahoga River, it’s heartening to see my hometown flip the script and the national media focus on the river’s remarkable recovery as a testament to how restored nature can spark urban revitalization.
- The river’s recovery from pollution is an important story. But as someone who works in international river conservation, I see the Cuyahoga as demonstrating a lesson that is even more remarkable, and equally needed, today: There is great value in protecting a river, not just protecting the quality of the water within it.
- The future could be much brighter for rivers and the people that depend on them. Due to the renewable revolution — the dramatically dropping costs for electricity from wind and solar — the world can indeed power its future with systems that are low-carbon, low-cost, and low-conflict with rivers and communities.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

No need to dam free-flowing rivers to meet world’s climate and energy targets
- In a comment article published in the Nature last month, scientists argue that an “energy future in which both people and rivers thrive” is possible with better planning.
- The hydropower development projects now underway threaten the world’s last free-flowing rivers, posing severe threats to local human communities and the species that call rivers home. A recent study found that just one-third of the world’s 242 largest rivers remain free-flowing.
- The benefits of better planning to meet increasing energy demands could be huge: A report released by WWF and The Nature Conservancy ahead of the World Hydropower Congress, held in Paris last month, finds that accelerating the deployment of non-hydropower renewable energy could prevent the fragmentation of nearly 165,000 kilometers (more than 102,500 miles) of river channels.

Interest in protecting environment up since Pope’s 2015 encyclical
- New research into the usage of environmentally related search terms on Google suggests that interest in the environment has risen since Pope Francis released Laudato Si’ in 2015.
- Laudato Si’, a papal encyclical, argues that it is a moral imperative for humans to look after the environment.
- Researchers and scholars believe that the pope’s support for protecting the environment could ripple well beyond the 16 percent of the world’s population that is Catholic.

Two-thirds of Earth’s longest rivers no longer free-flowing
- Just one-third of the planet’s 242 longest rivers still flow uninterrupted along their entire length, most of them located in remote regions of the Arctic, the Amazon Basin, and the Congo Basin, according to a study to be published in Nature tomorrow.
- The international team of researchers behind the study, led by Günther Grill of Canada’s McGill University, determined that, of the 91 rivers longer than 1,000 kilometers (about 600 miles) that once emptied out into an ocean, only 21 are still unobstructed from their source to the sea.
- Dams and associated reservoirs are the biggest causes of river obstruction, the researchers say. There are nearly 60,000 large dams in the world already, and as many as 3,700 more large hydroelectric dams are currently in the planning stages or under construction.
- Healthy rivers provide a number of benefits to mankind, from recreation to food security. Ensuring the connectivity of the world’s remaining free-flowing rivers is also critical if we’re to preserve biodiversity in freshwater systems.

The hidden costs of hydro: We need to reconsider world’s dam plans
- As thousands of hydroelectric dams are planned worldwide, including 147 in the Amazon, a new study finds that the true socio-environmental and cultural costs of dams are rarely evaluated before construction. Were such factors counted into the lifetime cost of the dams, many would not be built.
- Dam repairs and removal at the end of a project’s life are rarely figured into upfront costs. Nor are impacts on river flow reduction, loss of fisheries, and aquatic habitat connectivity, destruction of productive farmlands drowned by reservoirs, and the displacement of riverine peoples.
- Lack of transparency and corruption between government and dam construction companies is at the heart of the problem preventing change. Researchers recommend that environmental impact assessments (EIAs) and social impact assessments (SIAs) be granted enough weight so that if they turn out negatively it will prevent a bad dam from being built.
- EIAs and SIAs should be done by third parties serving citizens, not the dam company. Better governance surrounding dams needs to be organized and implemented. There needs to be increased transparency about the true financial, social, cultural and environmental costs of dams to the public. Maintaining river flows and fish migrations is also critical.

Brazil’s Sinop Dam flouts environmental legislation (Commentary)
- The reservoir of Brazil’s Sinop Dam began filling in January 30, 2019, killing fish in the river below the dam. Oxygen levels in the water were minimal. Only 30 percent of the vegetation had been removed from the reservoir area, rather than the 100 percent required by law – a law that has been widely ignored.
- Permission to fill the reservoir was granted based on a consultant report commissioned by the power company with modeling results predicting good water quality in the portion of the reservoir from which water is released to the river.
- The fish dieoff at Sinop draws attention to the inadequacy of the licensing system, to the responsibility of paid consultants, and to the continuing efforts of Brazil’s judicial system to return the country to legality in the environmental area.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Financiers to discuss hydropower as climate-change mitigation, but dams are not ‘clean energy’ (commentary)
- Nature, the world’s highest-impact scientific journal, published a comment on February 20 by an advisor to the Climate Bonds initiative, who claimed that dams are good for the climate and should be given priority for subsidies when a group of 500 global financiers who participate in the initiative meets in London on March 5.
- The Nature comment is highly misleading, especially for dams in tropical areas where much of the future hydroelectric development is expected to occur. In addition to having a substantial impact on global warming during the narrow time window we have to contain climate change, virtually all planned dams would be built anyway for reasons unrelated to climate mitigation. Granting subsidies with “green” money drains funds away from alternatives with real climate benefits.
- Tropical dams have social and environmental impacts that dwarf those of other energy alternatives. Global financiers should better inform themselves about these impacts and the perverse effects of hydropower as climate-change mitigation.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Audio: The true story of how 96 critically endangered sea turtle hatchlings survived New York City
- On this episode, the true story of how 96 critically endangered sea turtles survived a New York City beach — with a little help from some dedicated conservationists.
- This past summer, beachgoers in New York City spotted a nesting Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle on West Beach, which is on National Park Service land.
- Luckily, two of those beachgoers had the presence of mind to call the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation’s 24-hour hotline to report the nesting turtle — which very likely saved the lives of 96 Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle hatchlings.

Extreme floods on the rise in the Amazon: study
- Scientists and the media have documented deepening drought in the Amazon basin. But a new study finds that flood events are significantly intensifying too, becoming five times more common over the last century.
- The effect is caused by a combination of factors, including an increase in strength of the Walker circulation – an ocean-driven pattern of air circulation that carries warm moist air from the tropical Atlantic across South America towards the Pacific, resulting in Amazon precipitation.
- Human-driven climate change is a major contributing factor to this increased Amazon basin flooding. Intensifying flood events result in lives and property lost, and significant harm to croplands, pastures and livestock.
- A better understanding of flood and drought dynamics, and better predictability due partly to this study, could help reduce this damage. How escalating changes in precipitation occurrence and intensity might be altering Amazon flora and fauna is uncertain, though new research shows that tree species composition is altering.

Audio: The superb mimicry skills of an Australian songbird
- Today we take a listen to field recordings of the superb lyrebird, an Australian songbird known for its elaborate vocal displays and mimicry of other species’ songs.
- Our guest is Anastasia Dalziell, an ornithologist who has studied the superb lyrebird extensively. Males of the species clear a patch of forest floor for their stage, and sing their complex songs — for which they often borrow the songs of other species — to attract a mate.
- But female superb lyrebirds are also known to sing songs, and to produce calls that capably mimic other species as well as sounds from their environment, such as the creaking of trees blowing in the wind.
- In this Field Notes segment, Anastasia Dalziell tells us all about why scientists think male and female lyrebirds sing their songs and imitate other species — and plays a number of lyrebird songs that she’s recorded out in the field so you can hear their mimicry for yourself.

Laos dam collapse highlights global hydropower amnesia (commentary)
- The Xe-Pian Xe-Namnoy dam collapse should not be considered an accident. Rather, it resulted from global ignorance of the many downsides of large dams and of well-documented lessons learned over and over again.
- Across the developing world, dams continue to forcibly displace and thereby impoverish millions of people, drain national budgets, emit greenhouse gases, and destroy the ecological balance of entire river basins — balances on which millions of people intimately depend.
- Backed by recent research, here are five key things that governments, development financiers, and other proponents of development-by-dams seem to consistently forget.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Heavy rains preceded the Laos dam collapse. Was climate change a factor?
- Some observers have blamed the collapse of a dam in southern Laos last month, which killed dozens of people and displaced many more, on faulty construction.
- The companies building the dam say it is too early to tell why the accident happened, and have emphasized the monsoon rains that inundated the structure in the days leading up to its collapse.
- The question remains: To what extent was the heavier-than-usual rainfall that pushed the dam past its breaking point a result of climate change?

Belo Monte legacy: harm from Amazon dam didn’t end with construction (photo story)
- The controversial Belo Monte dam, operational in 2016 and the world’s third biggest, was forced on the people of Altamira, Pará state, and is now believed to have been built largely as payback to Brazil’s construction industry by the nation’s then ruling Workers’ Party for campaign contributions received.
- The dam was opposed by an alliance of indigenous and traditional communities, and international environmentalists, all to no avail. Today, the media coverage that once turned the world’s eyes toward Belo Monte, has gone away. But that hasn’t ended the suffering and harm resulting from the project.
- Tens of thousands of indigenous and traditional people were forced from their homes, and had to give up their fishing livelihoods. Meanwhile, the city of Altamira endured boom and bust, as workers flooded in, then abandoned it. The Belo Sun goldmine, if ever built, also continues to be a potential threat.
- In this story, Mongabay contributor Maximo Anderson and photographer Aaron Vincent Elkaim document the ongoing harm being done by the giant dam. Belo Monte, today, stands as a warning regarding the urgent need to properly assess and plan for mega-infrastructure projects in Amazonia.

Amazon dam impacts underestimated due to overlooked vine growth: study
- New research on the rapid growth of lianas – native woody vines – on the artificial reservoir islands of the Balbina dam in the Amazon finds that forest communities there underwent a transformation as a result of severe habitat fragmentation, resulting in the altering of the carbon sequestration and emission balance.
- Some tree species are severely impacted by this extreme form of habitat fragmentation and die, while native lianas — woody vines that climb to reach the forest canopy — thrive and rapidly fill the biological niche left by failing trees.
- Trees, with their greater biomass, store more carbon in trunks and branches than lianas, so the carbon balance shifts as lianas dominate. Rather than sequestering carbon, these dam-created islands end up emitting carbon as the trees die.
- The rapid growth of lianas further contributes to the degradation of remnant tree communities challenged by fragmentation. Amazon dam environmental impact assessments don’t currently evaluate increased reservoir island carbon emissions.

As Northwest salmon economy teeters on brink, Trump gives it a push
- Northwest salmon fisheries are in trouble, impacted by warming oceans and overdeveloped, dammed and silted spawning rivers and streams.
- Pre-contact indigenous groups in the region once organized their societies around sustainable fishing tribal agreements that worked. More recently, under past presidential administrations, Canadian, US and tribal authorities came together to save the declining salmon fisheries.
- Especially successful have been federally funded local, state and tribal programs, administered by NOAA, that protect and restore Northwest spawning streams — an investment in habitat and healthy local economies.
- Trump’s 2018 budget would cut all those programs, though for now Congress has restored them. However, politicians and regulators are concerned that Trump’s abandonment of Northwest fisheries and local economies will persist through his administration.

Indigenous group scores legal victory as dam floods their lands
- A brief legal battle related to the Barro Blanco hydroelectric project in western Panama concluded late last month in a rare triumph for indigenous communities who have opposed the dam’s construction for a decade.
- The dam’s construction company had accused three Ngäbe-Bugle leaders of instigating project delays and causing financial losses during protests at Barro Blanco’s entrance in July 2015. On September 20, a judge acquitted all three defendants of any wrongdoing.
- Nevertheless, the dam is now fully operational and its reservoir has flooded the land of three Ngäbe-Bugle communities.
- Leadership of the Ngäbe-Bugle is deeply divided between members who support the dam and those who oppose it, claiming that they had not been adequately consulted prior to the dam’s approval.

Andes dams could threaten food security for millions in Amazon basin
- More than 275 hydroelectric projects are planned for the Amazon basin, the majority of which could be constructed in the Andes whose rivers supply over 90 percent of the basin’s sediments and over half its nutrients.
- A new study projects huge environmental costs for six of these dams, which together will retain 900 million tons of river sediment annually, reducing supplies of phosphorus and nitrogen, and threatening fish populations and soil quality downstream.
- Accumulating sediments upstream of dams are projected to release 10 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year, significantly contributing to global warming, and would contaminate waters and the aquatic life they support with mercury.
- The construction of these dams should be reconsidered to preserve food security and the livelihoods of millions of people in the Amazon Basin.

HydroCalculator: new, free, online tool helps citizens assess dams
- With mega-dams planned globally, especially in the Amazon and Mekong, the Conservation Strategy Fund (CSF), an NGO, has developed a new free tool for evaluating a planned dam’s economic viability, greenhouse gas emissions and more.
- The HydroCalculator estimates the net economic value of a proposed dam, with and without the cost of greenhouse gas emissions factored in, number of years required before a project generates a profit, and years until net emissions become negative.
- The tool has been used by CSF, International Rivers, and a development bank and found to be very useful. Its forecasts have been tested against the economic viability and carbon emissions of existing dams, and found accurate.
- The HydroCalculator is meant for use by communities, researchers and activists who are often closed out of the technical dam planning process. It is available free online.

Trump budget threatens Zimbabwe climate change resilience programs
- President Trump has threatened to cut U.S. aid to developing nations by a third. This could impact Zimbabwe which receives $150 million annually to decrease food insecurity for 2.1 million people.
- Aid to Zimbabwe is important to rural farmers, victims of escalating drought due to climate change. USAID finances dams and irrigation projects, making agriculture sustainable.
- The 2018 budget isn’t due to be finalized by Congress until October 1, 2017, leaving Zimbabwe’s people in uncertainty as to the direly needed aid.
- What seems certain is that the climate resilience program will not be expanded to meet the needs of yet to be served Zimbabwean communities.

Trump’s policies could put Cambodia’s environment on chopping block
- Under President Donald Trump’s proposed 2018 budget, Cambodia could experience a 70 percent cut in aid from the United States.
- For Cambodia, this would mean a combined cut of $11.7 million from the budgets of the U.S. State Department and USAID, with the latter involved in a host of projects meant to help sustain and protect the Cambodian environment and help curb and adapt to climate change.
- Trump’s isolationism and “America First” policies could create a political vacuum in Southeast Asia, with China stepping in to replace the U.S., with major repercussions. China has historically been less transparent and less concerned about environmental impacts in nations where its government and corporations are at work.
- Trump’s authoritarian and anti-environmental policies are possibly being interpreted as a green light by autocratic leaders in the developing world. Cambodia, for example, has lately stepped up dissident arrests and sought transnational corporate partnerships to build large infrastructure projects — such projects often see high levels of corruption and do major environmental harm.

International action a must to stop irreversible harm of Amazon dams, say experts
- A study, published in Nature and led by Edgardo Latrubesse of the University of Texas at Austin, went beyond local impacts of individual dams to assess cumulative, basin-wide impacts that planned dams are bringing to 19 major Amazon sub-basins.
- The team developed a new metric: the Dam Environmental Vulnerability Index (DEVI) which includes assessments of basin integrity (vulnerability to land use change and erosion, etc.); fluvial dynamics (influence of sediment fluxes and flood pulses); and the extent of the river affected by dams.
- A score for each sub-basin from 0-100 was assigned, with higher values indicating greater vulnerability. The Madeira, Ucayali, Marañon and Tapajós sub-basins were found to be most threatened; all had DEVI totals higher than 60.
- The researchers say that a collective, cooperative, multi-country Amazon region assessment of dams and their cumulative impacts is urgently needed to get a handle on the true magnitude of the threat to the Amazon, as well as means to a solution.

Panama’s Barro Blanco dam to begin operation, indigenous pleas refused
- For nearly a decade, Panama’s Barro Blanco dam has met with strong opposition from indigenous Ngäbe communities. It has also generated violent suppression from government forces, and attracted criticism from international organizations.
- An agreement on the dam’s completion, reached by the government and the community’s now-ousted leader, was voted down by the Ngäbe-Bugle General Congress in September 2016. The dam’s surprise deregistration from the UN Clean Development Mechanism in October 2016 did nothing to stop the project.
- Now, the General Administrator of Panama’s National Authority for Public Services has declared that the Ngäbe-Bugle General Congress never presented a formal rejection document to the government, meaning dam operations can begin.
- Panama’s Supreme Court has ruled against the last two legal actions by indigenous communities impacted by Barro Blanco. The Supreme Court decisions cannot be appealed, so the communities have now exhausted all legal avenues within the country, leaving only international processes.

Counterintuitive: Global hydropower boom will add to climate change
- For many years new hydropower dams were assumed to be zero greenhouse gas emitters. Now with 847 large (more than 100 MW) and 2,853 smaller (more than 1 MW) hydropower projects currently planned or under construction around the world, a new global study has shown that dam reservoirs are major greenhouse gas emitters.
- The study looked at the carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O) emitted from 267 reservoirs across six continents. Globally, the researchers estimate that reservoirs contribute 1.3 percent of human-made greenhouse gas emissions, comparable to those from rice paddy cultivation or biomass burning.
- Reservoir emissions are not currently counted within the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN IPCC) emissions assessments, but they should be, argue the researchers. In fact, countries are currently eligible under the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) to receive carbon credits for newly built dams.
- The study raises the question as to whether hydropower should continue to be counted as green power or be eligible for UN CDM carbon credits.

A dam shame: the plight of the Mekong giant catfish
- Southeast Asia’s Mekong giant catfish (Pangasianodon gigas) is the world’s largest freshwater fish, with the biggest among them weighing an astonishing 650 pounds (300 kilograms), and growing to a length of 10 feet (3 meters).
- Species numbers are thought to have crashed by 80 percent in recent decades, although there are no reliable population estimates for the fish. A sudden escalation in the construction of hydroelectric dams on the Mekong could seal the fate of the species.
- A host of dams, both under construction and planned, threaten to block the catfish’s natural migration patterns, potentially driving it to extinction. The Xayaburi dam, which is already being built, poses the most immediate threat.
- Radio telemetry and environmental DNA techniques are crucial to the study and monitoring of this elusive creature in the wild. Conservationists working at Cambodia’s proposed Sambor Dam hope to help the government design a project that might vastly improve aquatic connectivity.

Top scientists: Amazon’s Tapajós Dam Complex “a crisis in the making”
- BRAZIL’S GRAND PLAN: Build 40+ dams, new roads and railways at the heart of the Amazon to transport soy from the interior to the coast and foreign markets, turning the Tapajós Basin and its river systems into an industrial waterway, leading to unprecedented deforestation, top researchers say.
- ECOSYSTEM IMPACTS: “The effects would clearly be devastating for the ecology and connectivity of the greater Tapajós Basin,” says William Laurance, of James Cook University, Australia; a leading rainforest ecology scientist. “It is not overstating matters to term this a crisis in the making.”
- HUMAN IMPACTS: The dams would produce “A human rights crisis, driven by the flooding of indigenous territories and forced relocation of indigenous villages… [plus] the loss of fisheries, reduced fertility of fertile floodplains, and polluting of clean water sources,” says Amazon Watch’s Christian Poirier.
- CLIMATE IMPACTS: “The worst-case scenario… over 200,000 square kilometers of deforestation,” says climatologist Carlos Nobre, which would be “very serious” and create “regional climate change.” Tapajós deforestation could even help tip the global scales, as the Amazon ceases being a carbon sink, and becomes a carbon source — with grave consequences for the planet.

Dams inevitably result in species decline, losses on reservoir islands
- Hydropower is being pushed hard in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe by dam developers who say it is an environmentally friendly form of alternative energy, but a recent study finds an unforeseen environmental impact for dams the world over.
- Islands created by reservoirs are often claimed as wildlife sanctuaries by dam proponents, but the study shows that such islands owe a big “extinction debt”, and see a slow but inexorable extinction of species, along with biodiversity impoverishment, over time.
- The meta-analysis evaluated data from 100 studies of reservoir islands at 15 dams in North, Central and South America, Europe and Asia. In more than 75 percent of cases, dams had an overall negative impact on reservoir island species, affecting species population density, ecological community composition, and species behavior.
- Reservoir islands have often been flaunted for their potential as conservation areas by dam developers. But the researchers recommend that islands no longer be counted as viable habitat or potential conservation areas in future dam proposals.

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