topic: Mekong Dams

topic: Mekong 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.

Dam-building on Mekong poses risk to regional industries, report says
- A new report from WWF highlights how vital regional supply chains that rely on a healthy and connected Mekong River are undermined by hydropower development.
- Recent decades have seen scores of hydropower dams built on the Mekong River system, including 13 large-scale projects spanning the river’s mainstream channel, with hundreds more either planned or under construction.
- The report looks at how the economic value of hydropower in the Lower Mekong Basin measures up against its high economic trade-offs for five key sectors that underpin regional economies.
- The report provides recommendations for governments, investors and businesses to understand the true cost of hydropower and mitigate the inevitable risks they face over the decades to come.

Robust river governance key to restoring Mekong River vitality in face of dams
- Billions of cubic meters of Mekong River water are now harnessed behind dams in the interests of power generation, severely affecting crucial physical and biological processes that sustain the river’s capacity to support life.
- As the pace of hydropower development continues to pick up across the river basin, cracks in the region’s dated and limited river governance systems are increasingly exposed.
- Major challenges include the lack of formal, legally binding regulations that govern development projects with transboundary impacts, and a legacy of poor engagement with riverside communities who stand to lose the most due to the effects of dams.
- Experts say that open and honest dialogue between dam developers and operators is needed to restore the river’s natural seasonal flow and ensure the river’s vitality and capacity to support biodiversity and natural resources is sustained.

As hydropower dams quell the Mekong’s life force, what are the costs?
- The Mekong River is one of Asia’s longest and most influential waterways, sustaining extraordinary species and biodiverse ecosystems and providing nutrition for millions via its fertile floodplains and unparalleled fisheries.
- But over the past few decades, the construction of hydropower dams has undermined the river’s capacity to support life: more than 160 dams operate throughout the Mekong Basin, including 13 on the river’s mainstream, with hundreds more either planned or under construction.
- Besides severing fish migration routes and natural sediment transport throughout the river system, the dams affect the river’s natural seasonal ebb and flow, an ancient rhythm alongside which ecosystems have evolved.
- Communities, scientists and decision-makers now face unprecedented challenges as fish catches dwindle, riverbanks erode, ecosystems collapse and the delta inexorably sinks.

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.

For Thai fishers facing dwindling catches, a Lao dam looms large
- Laos plans to build a $2 billion, 684-megawatt dam on the Mekong River, just 2 kilometers (1.25 miles) from the Thai border.
- The proposed Sanakham dam is the latest in a cascade of more than a dozen dams operating on the Mekong mainstream in China and Laos.
- Fishers in Thailand say they’ve already seen their catches decimated with each new dam built upstream, in particular the Xayaburi dam that went online in Laos in 2019.
- The Sanakham project is still in a “prior consultation” process with the Mekong River Commission, an advisory intergovernmental agency.

In the Mekong’s murky depths, giants abound, new expedition finds
- An underwater expedition into the deepest pools in the Mekong River has confirmed the presence of giant freshwater fish, fish migration routes, and high volumes of discarded fishing gear and plastic waste.
- The international team of underwater explorers, local fish biologists and fishermen used deep-sea camera technology to document the ecological value of the unique area in northeastern Cambodia, which is characterized by 80-meter-deep (260-foot) pools, flooded forests and braided river channels.
- But just as researchers reveal the value of its biodiversity, food security and fisheries livelihoods, the area faces a new threat: earlier this year, feasibility surveys began for a hydropower dam planned for directly upstream of the deep-pool habitats.
- According to the expedition team, construction of the Stung Treng dam would have “devastating ecological effects and could seriously threaten local food security in an area of the world already impacted by changing climate.”

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.

In Laos, a ‘very dangerous dam’ threatens an ancient world heritage site
- The government of Laos plans to build a 1,460-megawatt hydroelectric dam upstream of the ancient city of Luang Prabang, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
- The dam is part of the government’s aim to bring in revenue by selling electricity to its neighbors; the country already has 78 dams in operation, including the Xayaburi mega dam 130 kilometers downstream from Luang Prabang.
- Public dissent is muted within the one-party state, but experts and downstream countries are raising the alarm about the dam’s potential impacts on the heritage site and the broader Mekong ecosystem.

Cambodian dam a ‘disaster’ for local communities, rights group says
- Rights activists allege that a Chinese-financed hydroelectric project in northeastern Cambodia has been a human rights “disaster” after it displaced nearly 5,000 Indigenous and ethnic minority people.
- In a recent report, advocacy group Human Rights Watch says communities were largely coerced into accepting inadequate compensation and provided with substandard resettlement arrangements.
- The scheme also had wide-ranging environmental impacts, affecting fishery yields across the wider Mekong Basin and flooding vast areas of forest.
- The report highlights the humanitarian and environmental shortcomings of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which is advancing many similar projects across Africa and Asia.

Study puts 2050 deadline on tipping point for Mekong Delta salinity
- The increasing salinity in Mekong Delta is currently being driven by the building of dams upstream and sand mining downstream, but climate change will likely be the predominant factor by 2050, a new study shows.
- The Mekong Delta is a key farming region, and already more frequent and extensive saltwater intrusion is killing off large swaths of crops with greater frequency.
- The study’s authors say regional stakeholders need to address the anthropogenic drivers of saltwater intrusion in the delta now, before climate change makes it a global problem.
- The study also has implications for other delta systems across Asia, which face similar pressures, both anthropogenic and climate change-driven.

Our World Heritage is deeply tied to rivers and they need protection from dams (commentary)
- This month’s World Heritage meeting represents a critical opportunity for the UNESCO World Heritage Committee (WHC) to protect rivers and the World Heritage sites and cultures that depend on them.
- The WHC is charged with protecting sites around the world deemed of the highest cultural and natural values. The increasing impact of dams on World Heritage sites has prompted global outcry, most recently in the Selous Game Reserve in Tanzania and Luang Prabang in Laos.
- Beyond the WHC’s role in protecting existing sites from harm, governments, financiers and the hydropower industry must adopt clear ‘No-Go’ zones in, near or with impact on our World Heritage sites.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

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.

Award-winning Thai community continues the fight to save its wetland forest
- In 2018, community members in Ban Boon Rueang, in Thailand’s northern Chiang Rai province, successfully campaigned against plans to convert a wetland forest into a special economic zone.
- The wetland, which supports residents’ livelihoods as well as providing a haven for wildlife, remains under the customary management of villagers.
- However, it faces ongoing threats due to climate change and dam construction on the Mekong River. Local officials also cannot guarantee that future administrations won’t revive plans to convert the area for industrial use.

Analysis: Years in the making, Vietnam’s Mekong Delta policy takes the long view
- A vast experiment in land and water use management is now underway in the Mekong Delta, the part of Vietnam most threatened by the destabilizing effects of climate change.
- Competing visions for how to manage the delta in a new era of rising seas and upstream dam building have pitted adaptive fixes against more mechanical ones.

China held water back from drought-stricken Mekong countries, report says
- Eyes on Earth studied data from a 28-year period to determine the extent that dams in China on the Upper Mekong River impact natural water flow.
- While these dams have disrupted the river’s natural systems for years, 2019 saw a particularly damaging situation, as downstream countries faced a severe drought while the Upper Mekong received above-average rainfall.
- China’s water management practices and lack of data-sharing with neighboring countries threaten the livelihoods of roughly 60 million people.

Past and future tropical dams devastating to fish the world over: Study
- Most research on the ecological impacts of tropical dams does so one dam project at a time. But a new landmark study attempts to connect the dots globally by analyzing tropical dam impacts on freshwater river fish around the world.
- The research assembled data on the geographic range of 10,000 fish species, and checked those tropical species against the location of 40,000 existing dams and 3,700 dams that are either being built or planned for the near future.
- Scientists found that biodiversity hotspots including the Amazon, Congo, Salween and Mekong watersheds are likely to be hard hit, with river fragmentation potentially averaging between 25% and 40% due to hydropower expansion underway in the tropics.
- Dams harm fish ecology via river fragmentation, species migration prevention, reservoir and downstream deoxygenation, seasonal flow disruption, and blockage of nurturing sediments. Drastic sudden fish losses due to dams can also destroy the commercial and subsistence livelihoods of indigenous and traditional peoples.

Analysis: Floating solar power along the dammed-up Mekong River
- This year, the first floating solar power generating system in Southeast Asia was deployed on a reservoir in Vietnam.
- Floating solar power systems are being written into the energy master plans of Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines as well as Vietnam, and into the calculations of investment banks.
- The technology presents an alternative to additional hydroelectric power projects.

Rivers are the world’s heritage. Time to treat them as such (commentary)
- This July represents a critical opportunity to protect rivers and the World Heritage sites that depend on them. Key government leaders will converge on Baku, Azerbaijan for the 43rd annual meeting of the World Heritage Committee this week.
- Established under the auspices of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Committee is charged with protecting sites around the world deemed of the highest cultural and natural values. But oddly, no river has yet been directly protected by the Committee.
- Beyond protecting existing sites from harm, the World Heritage Committee needs to broaden its conception of what constitutes a natural site to recognize the intrinsic value of rivers, particularly free-flowing rivers, and the critical role they play in sustaining life.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

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.

Sarawak can invest in or give away its future (commentary)
- In October, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report outlining strategies the world can pursue to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius and maintain healthy economies and ecosystems. But unless we are smart about how we implement that blueprint, it could cause irreparable damage to the world’s great rivers.
- This may sound like a luxury for the richest nations, but it is key to building a prosperous Sarawak. The panel’s report urges a rapid transition to low-carbon, renewable sources of electricity. That call to action could trigger expanded investment in hydropower, but if development follows the pattern of earlier dam-building, it could accelerate an alarming loss of rivers and their resources.
- There’s no need to continue accepting tragic trade-offs between healthy rivers and low-cost, reliable, and renewable electricity. The renewable revolution provides an opportunity to have both. Governments, funders, developers, and scientists should seize it.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

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.

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.

Mega-dam costs outweigh benefits, global building spree should end: experts
- The environmental and social costs of hydroelectric mega-dams have been grossly underestimated, and will continue to grow further as climate change escalates, a new report finds. Dams have been linked to habitat degradation, harm to biodiversity and migrating aquatic species, and to negative changes in river ecology.
- More problems: dams rarely live up to promoter pledges. Costs are often underestimated, and once built, big dams rarely generate the huge energy amounts promised. River sediment flow estimates are commonly downplayed in plans, and builders rarely take climate change, with its intensifying droughts, into consideration.
- Despite evidence of harmful impacts and disappointing outputs, many more mega-dams are planned in developing nations in Asia, Africa and South America. But when mega-dam environmental and social impact assessments are conducted, they often underestimate harm, and their findings tend to be overlooked.
- A re-vamp of an age-old technology – the water wheel – could offer a reliable energy supply to local communities. Instream Energy Generation (IEG) uses clusters of small turbines, enabling fish and sediments to pass freely while generating power. Wind and solar offer other alternatives to mega-dams.

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.

Lao government says it will suspend new hydro projects after dam collapse kills 31
- After a dam failure in southern Laos left at least 31 dead, the government announced it will suspend all new dam projects and carry out safety inspections of all existing dams.
- A commission of inquiry will investigate the cause of the dam failure, while a separate committee will look into official responsibility.
- The prior consultation process for the proposed Pak Lay hydropower project appears not to have been postponed.

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?

Company to probe for minerals close to Mekong River dolphin habitat
- The Phnom Penh Post reported today that Medusa Mining, an Australian company, plans to invest $3 million over four years in explorations for gold, copper, oil, gas and precious stones in tributaries of the Mekong River in Cambodia.
- Irrawaddy river dolphins, an endangered species of cetacean, live in the Mekong adjacent to the areas slated for exploration.
- Only about 80 dolphins remain in the Mekong River, and, although their numbers are on the rise, they face threats from gillnets, dams, boat traffic and water pollution, which could be exacerbated by mining activity.

Roads, dams and railways: Ten infrastructure stories from Southeast Asia in 2017
- Southeast Asia is one of the epicenters of a global “tsunami” of infrastructure development.
- As the countries in the region work to elevate their economic standing, concerns from scientists and NGOs highlight the potential pitfalls in the form of environmental degradation and destruction that roads, dams and other infrastructure can bring in tow.
- Mongabay had reporters covering the region in 2017. Here are 10 of their stories.

From friends to strangers: The decline of the Irrawaddy dolphin (commentary)
- Now critically endangered, the last of the Irrawaddy dolphins (Orcaella brevirostris) are concentrated in nine deep-water pools over a 190-kilometer stretch of the Mekong between Cambodia’s Sambor district and Khone Falls on the Lao border.
- Today the Mekong’s dolphins face a new threat. The proposed Sambor Dam on the river’s mainstream would catalyze the extinction of the remaining dolphin population and have disastrous consequences for many other fish species, as well as the communities that depend on them.
- Can Cambodia bring this river dolphin back from the brink of extinction?
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

‘If it’s going to kill us, OK, we’ll die’: Villagers stand firm as Cambodian dam begins to fill
- Cambodia’s largest hydropower project, the Lower Sesan 2 dam, was officially launched late last month.
- Experts fear the dam will lead to a 9.3 percent loss of fish throughout the entire Lower Mekong River Basin, a concern Prime Minister Hun Sen has brushed aside.
- Thousands of people have already been relocated to make way for the dam, but around 100 families intend to stay on their land, despite intense pressure and the risk of inundation.

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.

Audio: Global megadam activism and the sounds of nature in Taiwan
- Activists from around the world attended the conference to strategize around stopping what they see as destructive hydropower projects. As Bardeen relates in her commentary, many attendees at the conference have faced harassment, intimidation, and worse for their opposition to dam projects, but they’re still standing strong in defense of free-flowing rivers.
- We also speak with Yannick Dauby, a French sound artist based in Taiwan. Since 2002, Dauby has been crafting sound art out of field recordings made throughout the small country of Taiwan and posting them on his website, Kalerne.net.
- In this Field Notes segment, Dauby plays a recording of his favorite singer, a frog named Rhacophorus moltrechti; the sounds of the marine life of the corals of Penghu, which he is documenting together with biologists; the calls bats use to echolocate (slowed down 16 times so they can be heard by human ears!); and more!
- All that plus the top news on this episode of the Mongabay Newscast!

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.

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.

The Dammed Don: Lao hydropower project pushes ahead despite alarm from scientists
- Plans call for the Don Sahong dam to be built at a key channel for migratory fish species. Experts fear its construction could drastically reduce the Mekong’s fish population.
- Laos is moving forward with construction plans, despite protests from scientists, conservationists and other Mekong countries.
- The dam will be built by foreign companies and managed through a private joint venture in which Laos’ state-owned electricity company has only a minority stake.

Newscast #7: Undiscovered Sumatran rhinos in the wild in Malaysia? Maybe, maybe not.
- Potential new evidence recently emerged that suggests there might be some undiscovered wild Sumatran rhinos in Malaysia, where they were declared extinct in the wild last year — though not everyone is convinced the new evidence is all that compelling.
- We also speak with Richard Bowden, a professor of environmental science at Pennsylvania’s Allegheny College, to answer a reader question: “What are the effects of climate change on phenology, primary production, carbon sequestration, and biotic interactions?”
- All that plus the top news and inspiration from nature’s front line!

The media megaphone: does it help curb bad infrastructure projects?
- A tsunami of infrastructure development is putting global ecosystems, wildlife and indigenous people at risk; with 25 million kilometers of new roads planned by 2050, most in the developing world. Add pipelines, hundreds of dams on the Amazon, Mekong and other river systems, with their electricity used often by mega-mining projects.
- As in the past, this tidal wave of construction is being heavily backed by national governments, greatly benefiting industry and international investors, often at the cost of indigenous peoples, rural communities, wildlife and habitat. Government and industry typically have large public relations budgets to promote such projects.
- Many conservationists trying to mitigate the harm of ill-advised projects, or even see them canceled, are relying heavily on the media to achieve their aims. There is precedent for such a strategy: media coverage has historically played a key part in curbing some of the most ambitious of international mega-infrastructure projects.
- As infrastructure development rapidly accelerate, today’s environmentalists are utilizing all the media tools at their disposal — ranging from traditional newspapers and television, to Twitter, Facebook, blogs and YouTube — to shine a light on poorly designed infrastructure projects and inform and engage the public.

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