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Vital Mekong fish corridors tracked for first time, but funding cuts threaten future research
- By implanting fish with small electronic transmitters, researchers were able to track key migration corridors in the Mekong River.
- The findings underscore the threat that dozens of planned dams along the Mekong will cut off these vital migratory paths.
- The study, which the lead author describes as a “pilot effort,” was funded by USAID; the funding gap caused by the U.S. foreign aid freeze leaves the future of such research in question.
How Mexican fishers are protecting an endemic oyster — and its ecosystem
- In Mexico’s Nayarit marshes on the Pacific Coast, the work of a fishing group called Ostricamichin has enabled the recovery of the Cortez oyster, an endemic and economically important mollusk, along with other marine species.
- The Marismas Nacionales Nayarit National Reserve, where the Cortez oyster is cultivated, accounts for 45% of Mexico’s national fishing production, thanks to floating rafts that help grow the endemic species in its waters.
- However, members of Ostricamichin say their project is threatened by climate change and illegal fishing. But the biggest threat, currently, is a proposed dam project which, they say, would devastate the delicate ecosystem.
‘Heart of Borneo’ dams raze Indigenous forests for Indonesia green energy drive
- A joint venture between Indonesia and state-owned Malaysia companies is constructing a network of dams in the Bulungan and Malinau districts of North Kalimantan, a sparsely populated Bornean province bordering the Malaysian state of Sarawak.
- The dams will generate 9,000 megawatts to power industry in the under-construction Kalimantan Industrial Park Indonesia in Bulungan district, a site the government hopes will be a global hub of solar panel and battery manufacture.
- One community of around 28 families has already been relocated as dam contractors prepare to submerge more villages and tunneling continues.
New dam approval in Cambodia raises concerns about REDD+ projects
The Cambodian government recently approved at least three new irrigation dam projects within protected forests of the Cardamom Mountains that overlap with two carbon credit projects, reports Mongabay’s Gerald Flynn. Projects to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD+) aim to combat climate change and support local communities by generating carbon credits for protecting forests. […]
Drowned lands and poisoned waters threaten Peru’s campesinos and their livestock
- Peru’s Lake Chinchaycocha, also known as Lake Junín, and its endemic species are under threat in part due to environmental problems caused by mining activities, hydroelectric power operations, the discharge of urban wastewater and the overexploitation of resources.
- Campesino communities nearby have lived for decades with this contamination, which they blame for killing so much livestock that one community had to open a cemetery specifically for animals.
- For several months a year, due to the flooding by the nearby dam, homes and pastures are inundated with contaminated water, forcing residents to migrate to higher ground.
- Studies have confirmed the presence of heavy metals in the water exceeding environmental quality standards, but there haven’t been any studies yet linking this to human and livestock health impacts in the region.
New dams call into question Cambodia’s commitment to REDD+ projects
- Three new irrigation dams have been approved in Cambodia’s Cardamom Mountains, overlapping with two carbon credit projects
- The new developments join five hydropower projects that are already eating into these same forests.
- Communities in the affected area have described the onslaught of dam projects, from which they say they haven’t benefited, as “a war against the forest.”
- Experts say the approval throws into question the Cambodian government’s commitment to carbon credits as a viable climate tool.
In remote Philippine villages, micro-hydro alternatives power Indigenous homes
- Around 3.6 million households in the Philippines are not connected to the national power grid. In the country’s mountainous north, some villages have overcome this challenge by building and maintaining small-scale hydroelectric generators.
- These micro-hydro systems have small environmental footprints and have allowed electricity to reach villages before road networks do, thanks to communal efforts to haul equipment through the mountains on foot or on horseback.
- This region has a long history of conflict over planned mega hydroelectric dams, and an NGO that helps communities build and maintain micro-hydro systems says they are working in an environment of increasingly hostile scrutiny from the military.
Seeking the ‘humanity–wetland’ balance: Interview with Zimbabwean activist Jimmy Mahachi
- For the past decade, Jimmy Mahachi has advocated for his community’s right to water and the preservation of the Cleveland Dam wetland, a peri-urban wetland in the Zimbabwean capital Harare.
- The wetland is threatened by sand mining, development and the overexploitation of water resources.
- Some residents of the New Mabvuku suburb where Mahachi lives haven’t had running water for more than 30 years, forcing them to collect water from unprotected and even contaminated sources.
- In an interview with Mongabay, Mahachi sheds light on the pressures on environmental activism in Zimbabwe and the connection between humanity and wetlands.
Still no sweet spot in 2024 for Nepal in balancing conservation & development
- Nepal faces ongoing challenges in balancing the development of infrastructure such as roads, railways and hydropower dams, with the need to conserve its rich biodiversity, forests and rivers.
- Infrastructure projects continue to raise ecological concerns, including habitat fragmentation, pollution, and risks to wildlife.
- Plans like the rerouting of the East-West Railway and buffer zones around rivers in Kathmandu have sparked protests due to fears of displacement, loss of property and economic hardships.
- These conflicts underline the challenges of aligning development with community and environmental needs.
Thai citizens protest plans for Mekong dam amid transboundary concerns
- Citizens in northern Thailand staged protests along the shore of the Mekong River on Dec. 7 to draw attention to a controversial dam slated to be built on the river’s mainstream over the border in Laos.
- They demanded Thai banks and policymakers withdraw their support for the scheme due to its as-yet-unknown cross-border environmental and social impacts.
- The protests follow a particularly turbulent wet season marked by record-breaking floods that wrought high costs on riverside communities. Experts have said the dam would exacerbate such events should it be built.
- Halting the project to allow sufficient time for thorough transboundary ecological and social studies is absolutely critical, the activists said.
Dam displaces farmers as drought parches Indonesia’s Flores Island
- In 2015, Indonesia announced the construction of seven dams to provide water in East Nusa Tenggara province, an eastern region of the archipelago where access to freshwater is scarce during the annual dry season.
- One of the national priority dams, the Lambo Dam on Flores Island, has yet to be finished because of a land dispute with Indigenous communities in Nagekeo district.
- Research shows that much of Indonesia, particularly in the east, face increasing water stress due to climate change, as well as drought spikes brought on by the positive Indian Ocean dipole and El Niño patterns.
Dam terrorism: How mining companies in Brazil scare residents into relocating
- Recent research shows how mining companies in Brazil are artificially inflating risk levels for some dams holding mining waste in an effort to scare residents into moving out of the area.
- This so-called dam terrorism began almost immediately after the deadly collapse in January 2019 of a tailings dam in Brumadinho municipality, Minas Gerais state, with several mining companies suddenly declaring their own dams were no longer certified safe.
- Residents living near these dams have been woken up by emergency sirens in the middle of the night, even though there was no evidence that the dams were about to collapse.
- Daniel Neri, the researcher behind the new study, says these scare tactics exploited “the terror of the tragedy in Brumadinho to make people leave everything behind.”
Despite court ruling, Yaqui water rights abuses ignored
- For decades, the Yaqui peoples in the northwestern Mexican state of Sonora have been fighting to defend their rights to the Yaqui River, which is sacred to the Indigenous tribe and has been drained of all its water in their territory after decades of overexploitation, unequal water distribution and droughts.
- In 2010, the government approved the construction of an aqueduct, known as the Independencia Aqueduct, to supply water to several cities in the state, which was later found to be a violation of the tribe’s rights.
- Despite a favorable court ruling, which found that the Mexican government did not consult the Yaqui tribe before the aqueduct’s approval, it did not suspend its construction, which was inaugurated in 2012, despite evidence that it would cause irreparable damage to the community.
Record-breaking floods in northern Thailand intensify scrutiny of Mekong dam project
- Major flooding along Mekong tributaries in northern Thailand has heightened scrutiny of plans to build a major hydropower dam spanning the pivotal watercourse over the border in Laos.
- Experts say the Pak Beng Dam would worsen severe seasonal flooding by elevating water levels upstream into the stretch of the Mekong that flows through northern Thailand.
- In 2023, Thailand’s national electricity authority signed an agreement to purchase electricity from the controversial scheme, essentially greenlighting the next phase of development.
- This week, farmers, activists and policymakers met in the flood-prone province of Chiang Rai to discuss the potential cross-border impacts of the dam, with many speakers urging the Thai government and Thailand-based investors to reconsider their support of the scheme due to the risks of the dam exacerbating devastating floods.
Philippines hydro boom rips Indigenous communities
- The Philippine government has approved 99 hydropower projects in the mountainous Cordillera region, part of a broader plan to rely on renewable energy sources for 35% of the country’s power by 2030.
- The planned projects are dividing rural communities between those who believe the dams will bring in jobs and money and those who fear damage to water sources and cultural sites.
- The Cordillera region, home to many Indigenous groups, has a deep history of activism against dams.
- It’s also heavily militarized as one of the last bastions of an armed communist insurgency — a circumstance state security forces are apparently exploiting to coerce communities into compliance.
Malaysian court shuts down hydroelectric dam project on Indigenous land
- A Malaysian court ruled this week that hydropower companies building a dam on land belonging to the Indigenous Semai people of Malaysia’s Perak state had failed to secure proper consent and must halt operations immediately.
- The court also ruled that the state and federal governments, and the federal agency tasked with overseeing Indigenous affairs, had failed in their duty to protect Indigenous land from encroachment.
- Activists expressed relief and elation at the verdict, which marks a major milestone for land rights for Malaysia’s Indigenous peoples, known collectively as Orang Asal.
- The verdict can still be appealed.
Reporting confirms alleged Indigenous rights violations in Nepal hydropower project
- Tucked between mountains sacred to Indigenous peoples in eastern Nepal, a conflict is brewing between Sangrila Urja Pvt. Ltd., a hydropower company, and yak herders who say the company violated the law by lying in government reports.
- The tug-of-war between the hydropower company and the Bhote Singsa communities is taking place in the Lungbasamba landscape, a biocultural heritage home to endangered flora and fauna and that communities have preserved for generations.
- Mongabay was able to verify most of the communities’ claims and confirm fabricated information in the environmental impact assessment, forged signatures during a public hearing and a lack of proper consultation with the community.
- The company director refutes the allegations and evidence and says it awaits the resumption of its activities once a lawsuit filed by civil society organizations confirms they can move forward with the project.
A tribe once declared ‘extinct’ helps reintroduce salmon to the Columbia River
- For thousands of years, Kettle Falls was a vital salmon fishing ground for the Sinixt, but early 20th-century dam construction blocked salmon migration.
- Wrongfully declared extinct in Canada in 1956, the Sinixt fought for recognition and were officially acknowledged as Aboriginal Peoples of Canada in 2021.
- In 2023, the U.S. government signed a $200 million agreement with a coalition of tribes, including the Sinixt, to fund an Indigenous-led salmon reintroduction program into the Columbia River system above dams in Washington.
- Sinixt leaders say this project is an important effort to help right a historical wrong in the legacy that led to their “extinction” status, while many hope to one day join salmon efforts on their traditional territory in Canada.
On heavily dammed Mekong, tracking study tries to find where the fish are going
- Despite the huge environmental and economic importance of migratory fish in the Mekong River, there’s been little empirical data documenting where and how fish travel within the Lower Mekong Basin.
- For a recent study, researchers teamed up with fishers in Laos to tag hundreds of fish with transponders before releasing them to continue their migrations.
- The study found that these fish travel hundreds of miles along the river, including through several active and planned hydropower projects in Laos.
- It also found that at least a portion of the fish were able to traverse a fish ladder on an existing dam.
Hydropower dams further undermine REDD+ efforts in Cambodia
- Five hydropower dams are currently being built in the Cardamom Mountains with reservoirs set to collectively span more than 15,000 hectares (37,065 acres) across protected forests.
- Three of these new dams encroach on forests where REDD+ projects are currently operating, pitting “green” energy infrastructure against conservation goals.
- Residents living nearby one of the dam sites fear that history may repeat as hydropower dams have typically been used to illegally extract valuable timber.
History repeats as logging linked to Cambodian hydropower dam in Cardamoms
- Loggers are targeting protected forests in Cambodia’s Cardamom Mountains using the cover of a new hydropower dam
- The dam is being built by Ly Yong Phat, a wealthy Cambodian tycoon with ties to the top tiers of government and a long history of environmental vandalism in the Cardamoms
- Timber from the Stung Meteuk hydropower dam has already been sold via a government-facilitated auction, but some timber may have been illegally logged
- The dam also overlaps significantly with the Samkos REDD+ project which is still under validation and verification
U.K. court to hear lawsuit for victims of Brazilian dam disaster
- In 2015, the Fundão tailings dam collapse in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais killed 19 people, destroyed hundreds of homes and left the local economy in ruins.
- When the dam broke, approximately 50 million cubic meters (1.7 billion cubic feet) of arsenic-laced mud traveled over 650 kilometers (400 miles) down the Doce river, destroying the towns of Bento Rodrigues and Paracatu de Baixo before emptying into the Atlantic Ocean.
- A U.K. court will decide whether the companies Broken Hill Proprietary and Vale are liable and should compensate the victims.
Will the Mekong and Salween pay the price of China’s energy transition?
- Proposals by some of the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters to transition their energy sectors away from fossil fuels and toward renewables have generally been welcomed by the scientific community as progress in the right direction.
- However, while acknowledging the energy transition as essential, energy experts caution policymakers to also consider the unintended social and ecological consequences of scaling up renewable infrastructure, such as large-scale hydropower dams and wind and solar farms.
- A new study finds that China’s plans to decarbonize its energy sector by 2060 could have inadvertent but severe impacts on local farmland and transboundary river basins, including the regionally significant Mekong and Salween.
- The authors say that strategies to reduce electricity demand combined with increased investment in emerging energy technologies could curb the need for further hydropower expansion in the upper stretches of the pivotal rivers, thereby reducing cascading downstream impacts.
Banks backing Mekong hydropower failing on due diligence, report reveals
- A new report shows that major banks operating in Southeast Asia are failing to address the environmental and human rights consequences of their investments in large-scale hydropower dams along the Mekong River.
- The report from sustainable finance watchdogs reveals regulatory shortcomings at regional and national levels that it says fail to hold banks accountable for their investments.
- Riverside communities and rights groups have long questioned why banks operating in Mekong countries continue to fund environmentally damaging hydropower projects in neighboring countries, despite the high costs and consequences for communities in their own country.
- The report calls on financial institutions to adopt more sustainable banking policies and practices when deciding which projects to support.
Mato Grosso shelves environmental license application for Amazon dam
- The Mato Grosso government has halted the licensing for the Castanheira hydropower plant, proposed for construction in the Juruena River Basin, which would flood a 95-km2 [37-square-mile] area and directly affect Indigenous and rural communities in northern Mato Grosso state.
- Social movements in the area see this as a victory in a struggle that lasted more than a decade.
- The fact that the project was shelved does not mean it has been put to rest; Brazil’s Ministry of Mines and Energy may still resubmit plans for the construction of the dam.
In Nepal, environmental advocates fend off ‘anti-development’ smear
- Nepal’s political focus on large-scale infrastructure development has long raised environmental concerns, with projects like dams and highways lacking adequate safeguards.
- Despite international commitments and constitutional rights to a healthy environment, Nepal’s government faces challenges in implementing effective environmental policies.
- Conservationists advocating for nature and sustainable development say protecting ecosystems is important for both the planet and its people.
- They also rebuff accusations from politicians that they’re “anti-development,” saying supporting nature doesn’t mean being opposed to development.
Controversy brews over proposed dam on Kathmandu’s Bagmati River
- A proposed dam on Kathmandu’s Bagmati River aims to collect rainwater during the wet season and release it in the dry season to rejuvenate the river, but skeptics question its viability and safety.
- Concerns include environmental impact, potential destruction of trees, pollution and the risk of dam failure in earthquake-prone Nepal.
- Political, ecological and community-related questions remain unanswered, with some advocating for alternatives and further analysis before proceeding.
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.
Brazil’s 2024-2027 “Transversal Environmental Agenda”: The elephants in the room (commentary)
- Brazil’s current 4-year development plan is accompanied by a “Transversal Environmental Agenda,” released last week, to coordinate environmental measures across the different federal agencies.
- While the agenda lists many worthwhile items in the portfolios of the various ministries, it fails in the most basic role such an agenda should play: ensuring that government actions do not cause environmental catastrophes.
- Missing subjects include foregoing building roads that open Amazon forest to deforestation, legalizing illegal land claims that stimulates an unending cycle of land grabbing and invasion, plans for hydroelectric dams in Amazonia, expanding oil and gas drilling and the burning of fossil fuels that must end without delay if global warming is to be controlled.
- An earlier version of this text was published in Portuguese by Amazônia Real. It is a commentary and does not necessarily reflect the views of Mongabay.
Sarawak government’s hydropower plans worry Indigenous communities
- Indigenous residents begin submitting petitions as Sarawak officials announce three new cascading hydropower dams throughout the state.
- While Sarawak’s chief minister appears all-in for the dam in comments, other officials say plans hang on the results of upcoming feasibility studies.
- After some villages were devastated by older dams, Indigenous residents ask officials to consult them fully or simply drop the plans.
Conservation ‘setback’ looms as Nepal opens protected areas to hydropower projects
- Nepal’s government has approved a controversial new proposal allowing the development of large-scale hydropower plants within protected areas, prompting concerns about conservation setbacks.
- The “Construction of Physical Infrastructure Inside Protected Areas” procedures was officially approved Jan. 4, permitting hydropower developers to build projects entirely within protected areas, release minimal water during the dry season, and acquire land more easily.
- Conservationists, lawyers and Indigenous communities have opposed the policy, calling it legally flawed and warning that it threatens conservation achievements in the face of climate change.
- More than two dozen conservationists submitted feedback during the policy’s public consultation phase, but these weren’t accommodated to any significant degree in the final document.
Latest planned Amazon dam project threatens Indigenous lands, endemic species
- A study led by an Indigenous organization has found inconsistencies in the planning and licensing processes of the Castanheira hydroelectric project that it warns could alter the course of the Arinos River, one of the last still flowing freely in the Juruena River Basin.
- An area the size of 9,500 soccer fields would be flooded for the dam’s reservoir, affecting a region that’s home to Indigenous territories, small and medium-sized family farms, and the ancestral territory of the Tapayuna Indigenous people.
- The federal government has still not released a statement defining a timeline for the dam’s construction, even though feasibility studies began in 2010; the project is currently awaiting its environmental licensing.
What Brazil should have said at COP28 but didn’t (commentary)
- Brazil’s President Lula made important contributions to COP28 in demanding that the 1.5°C temperature increase limit be respected, in recognizing the risk of Amazon forest collapse, and in promising to end Brazil’s Amazon deforestation by 2030.
- Lula failed to explain how zero deforestation would be achieved, implicitly relying only on the Ministry of Environment’s command and control operations against illegal clearing. The causes of deforestation must be addressed, many of which are being strengthened by the rest of Lula’s presidential administration.
- These include legalization of illegal land claims in government land and highway projects such as BR-319 and associated side roads that would open vast areas of Amazon forest to the entry of deforesters. Brazil’s plans for opening new oil and gas extraction areas and expanding existing ones contradict the discourse on limiting temperature rise to 1.5°C.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
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.
Java farmers displaced by dam remain treading water after decades
- Farmers displaced by Indonesia’s Jatigede Dam have been forced to find new livelihoods or move to different regions of the archipelago.
- Many families were paid the equivalent of just 50 U.S. cents per square meter of land at the time, or 4.5 cents per square foot, as land acquisition accelerated in the 1980s.
- Indonesia’s second-largest dam is about to commence operation as a 110-megawatt hydroelectric plant, in addition to providing irrigation water for around 1 million farmers.
Conservationists condemn Nepal proposal to allow hydropower in protected areas
- The Ministry of Forest and Environment has proposed a new procedure that would allow large-scale hydropower development inside protected areas, with fewer environmental safeguards and more legal loopholes.
- Conservationists and legal experts have criticized the proposal as going against the Constitution and the National Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act as well as risking the biodiversity and ecosystem services of Nepal’s protected areas.
- They have also warned that the proposal could undermine the balance between development and conservation and expose the country to more climate change impacts such as floods and landslides.
- The Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation has defended the proposal as documenting the existing practices and bolstering the balance, not upsetting it.
In Philippines, climate change tests Indigenous farming like never before
- In the uplands of the Philippines’ Iloilo province, Indigenous Suludnon farmers maintain deep connections to the agroecosystem that has sustained their community for generations.
- Agroforestry systems and diversified planting have helped the Suludnon cope with a changing climate, and traditional knowledge of natural signs of hazardous weather have allowed them to prepare for storms.
- However, with climate change bringing increasingly frequent extreme weather events, along with crop pests and disease, the Suludnon’s time-refined methods are coming under strain.
Divided by mining: Vale’s new rail track fractures an Amazon Indigenous group
- In 1985, mining giant Vale opened a railroad that cuts through the Mãe Maria Indigenous Territory in the Brazilian Amazon.
- Since being built, the railroad has driven away game, cut off access to important water bodies and disrupted the Indigenous peoples’ way of life by introducing compensation money paid by Vale into the daily life of the villages.
- Now, the mining giant has secured permission to build a second railroad track.
- Indigenous leaders say that not only will the railroad extension cause greater environmental damage, but also that the company reached the agreement by using “divide and conquer” tactics over the years and by applying other maneuvers they consider unethical.
Indigenous villagers still lack safe land, water & food after 2019 dam burst
- In January 2019, a burst tailings dam in Brumadinho Valley, Minas Gerais, Brazil, devastated the territory surrounding the Paraopeba River, including the land inhabited by the Pataxó and Pataxó Hã-hã-hãe Indigenous groups.
- Part of the community remained in the original village of Naõ Xohã, where today the river remains unfishable and the soil is contaminated by heavy metals. Changes in eating habits have led to an epidemic of diabetes, intoxication and allergies in the community.
- As Vale did not fund a relocation program, other Indigenous families moved to slums on the outskirts of the city of Belo Horizonte, where they lived in precarious structures and underwent racial discrimination by people in the city.
- In 2021, a local Japanese-Brazilian association donated land to build a new village called Katurãma, where the Indigenous people in Belo Horizonte were able to move; still, they have dealt with lacking resources and threats from land-grabbers and wildcat miners.
Dam-building spree pushes Amazon Basin’s aquatic life closer to extinction
- A recent study looking at 343,000 kilometers of waterways along 6,000 rivers across the Amazon Basin highlights the importance of free-flowing rivers to migratory species of fish and turtles, as well as river dolphins.
- More than 20 species are threatened by the construction of hydroelectric dams on long-distance rivers, considered to be key corridors for biodiversity.
- The study’s researchers identified 434 dams that have either been built or are currently under construction across the whole of the Amazon Basin, and a further 463 proposed dams that are in various stages of planning.
- One of the proposed dams on the Tapajós River would leave at least four pods of river dolphins isolated from one another, leaving them facing a similar fate to the tucuxi river dolphins impacted by similar projects on the Madeira River and today threatened with extinction.
Ethiopia’s largest community conservation area brings Indigenous communities into the fold
- Indigenous communities in the Lower Omo River Valley of southwestern Ethiopia have taken ownership and management responsibilities of the Tama Wildlife Reserve through the creation of the Tama Community Conservation Area (TCCA).
- The TCCA, spanning 197,000 hectares (486,000 acres), is Ethiopia’s largest community conservation area.
- The area is home to diverse wildlife, including the endemic black-winged lovebird, and is inhabited by the Mursi, Bodi, Northern Kwegu and Ari communities.
- The TCCA will be managed by a community council; however, guidelines on farming activities, natural resource use and preventing human-wildlife conflict have not yet been established.
Seeking environmental DNA in Himalayan rivers: Q&A with Adarsh Man Sherchan
- Conservation geneticist Adarsh Man Sherchan is one of the leading experts keeping track of the impacts that Nepal’s dozens of dams are having on freshwater species.
- The Himalayan country has more than 120 hydroelectricity plants, many of which were built without prior aquatic biodiversity assessments.
- With advances in assessment technologies, notably environmental DNA (eDNA), and a growing cohort of trained experts like Sherchan, there’s a greater focus on identifying and mitigating the impacts of dams on river life.
- In an interview with Mongabay, Sherchan talks about why eDNA is a gamechanger for monitoring species, the process of getting eDNA samples from rivers, and why jeans and flip-flops are a no-go for fieldwork.
Fishers confirm scientists’ warning: Brazil’s Belo Monte dam killed off the river
- Seven years after the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant went into operation, fishers confirm what scientists have been verifying in studies: the fish have disappeared from this stretch of the Xingu River.
- According to Brazil’s Public Prosecutor’s Office, the construction of the dam caused the direct deaths of more than 85,000 fish, equivalent to 30 metric tons, between 2015 and 2019.
- The loss of fish has reverberated up the food chain, with local fishing communities no longer able to make a living that generations before them took for granted.
Forest behind bars: Logging network operating out of Cambodian prison in the Cardamoms
- A Mongabay investigation has uncovered a logging operation being run out of Koh Kong provincial prison that gets its timber from the site of a new hydropower dam being built in Thma Bang.
- Old-growth forest in Central Cardamom Mountains National Park is being cleared to make way for the Stung Tatai Leu hydropower dam, but the environmental impacts remain opaque.
- NGOs and the Ministry of Environment provide minimal oversight to prevent illegal loggers from exploiting the project site, and former loggers detailed how bribes facilitate the illicit timber trade.
- Prison officials maintained that the timber is used in a skills development program, but former inmates alleged that officials have been exploiting prison labor to craft luxury furniture.
Second chance for Lula as controversial Amazon dam goes up for renewal
- In the biological and cultural hotspot of the Volta Grande in Brazil’s Amazon, Indigenous communities and scientists have teamed up to monitor the impacts of the Belo Monte hydroelectric project, one of the biggest in the world.
- The dam complex has diverted 80% of the Xingu River’s water flow, significantly affecting the aquatic life in the Volta Grande river bend and pushing the entire ecosystem toward collapse, along with the local communities who rely on it.
- The complex’s environmental license, which lasts six years and dictates the amount of water flowing through Belo Monte, is currently up for review by the federal environmental protection agency, IBAMA.
- President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva played a key role in pushing for the construction of Belo Monte, and now, back in power, can influence a new path for the environment and local communities, activists say.
Dams and plantations upend livelihoods in Ethiopia’s Lower Omo River Valley
- Food insecurity, famine and malnutrition have blighted the agropastoralist communities of the Lower Omo River Valley in southwestern Ethiopia.
- A government source blames a long-term drought for the recent suffering and, in some cases, the deaths of people in this part of the country.
- But researchers and human rights advocates say the drought has only exacerbated fundamental changes to the cultures of these peoples brought on by the construction of a dam and the establishment of sugarcane plantations in the region.
- They say such “economic development” projects have dispossessed the Lower Omo’s peoples of their farming and grazing lands and irreversibly altered the natural cycles of the Omo River that was once the mainstay of their livelihoods.
Organic farming, and community spirit, buoy a typhoon-battered Philippine town
- After their town was devastated by floods in 2004, residents of Kiday in the Philippines shifted to organic methods when rebuilding their farms.
- Today, the Kiday Community Farmers’ Association practices agroecology and agroforestry, maintaining communal plots as well as private gardens.
- The association receives nonprofit support, but government funding continues to prioritize conventional agriculture over more sustainable methods.
- Farmers in Kiday also face a new threat in the form of the government-supported Kaliwa Dam, which is under construction upstream of the village.
‘It gives life’: Philippine tribe fights to save a sacred river from a dam
- Each year, members of the Dumagat-Remontado tribe gather at the Tinipak River to observe an Indigenous ritual to honor their supreme being and pray for healing and protection.
- This year, the rite had an additional intention: to ward off an impending dam project they fear will inundate the site of the ritual.
- The Kaliwa Dam, part of a program aimed at securing a clean water supply for the Manila metropolitan region, is already under construction and scheduled to go online in 2027.
- The project has faced resistance from civil society groups as well as many of the Dumagat-Remontado, who say they fear it will cause both environmental and cultural damage.
Saving the last Tapanuli orangutans
- The Tapanuli orangutan was described in 2017 as a new great ape species, and with a population of less than 800, is the most endangered great ape on the planet.
- Its habitat has been drastically reduced by deforestation driven by mining, agriculture and logging.
- A Chinese-backed hydropower dam project, under construction since 2015, is cutting across the forests where the orangutans live, increasing their risk of extinction.
- People living in surrounding areas have opposed the dam project over fears of losing their homes and livelihoods, but have faced attempts to silence their resistance.
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.
In Sumatra, increased orangutan sightings point to growing threats to the apes
- Villagers in the Batang Toru forest in northern Sumatra say orangutan sightings in their farms and settlements have increased recently.
- They attribute this to the animals being driven out of their forest habitat by ongoing construction of a hydropower plant and dam.
- The construction activity puts added pressure on the already critically endangered Tapanuli orangutan, which numbers fewer than 800 individuals scattered in populations that could be cut off from each other by the project.
- Villagers say it’s important to preserve the animals, as they’re a key seed disperser for the fruit trees that farmers here depend on.
Chinese investment continues to hurt Latin American ecosystems, report says
- China has taken a special interest in deepening ties with Latin America over the last twenty years, providing billion in loans for mines, electric grids, trains and roads. But many of the country’s projects ignore regulations protecting the environment and local and Indigenous peoples.
- A report delivered this month to the U.N. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights explores 14 cases from nine Latin American countries in which there was some example of an environmental or human rights violation.
- The cases include mines, hydroelectric dams, oil fields, trains and animal processing plants across Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela.
‘Development’ projects in Ethiopia leave starvation, disease in wake: Report
- Indigenous groups in southwestern Ethiopia are suffering from starvation and disease after being displaced from their land for construction of a dam and the installation of large-scale sugarcane plantations, according to a report from the Oakland Institute, a California-based think tank.
- These projects have deprived the communities living in the Lower Omo Valley of their ability to farm and maintain their livestock herds, but this “catastrophe” has gone largely unnoticed in the shadow of even wider hunger and displacement due to civil war in the northern Tigray region, the report says.
- Humanitarian NGO World Vision International delivered some food aid to the region in November 2022.
- But the Oakland Institute said more food and medical care is urgently needed, along with the return of the land back to the Indigenous groups who have lived in this region for centuries, and is urging the government and the humanitarian community to respond immediately.
Dammed, now mined: Indigenous Brazilians fight for the Xingu River’s future
- Canadian mining company Belo Sun wants to build a huge gold mine in the Big Bend of the Xingu River in the Brazilian Amazon, but faces opposition from Indigenous communities.
- In addition to the environmental impacts, experts warn of the risk of the proposed tailings dam rupturing, which could flood the area with 9 million cubic meters (2.4 billion gallons) of toxic waste.
- The same region is already suffering the impacts of the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam, which diverts up to 85% of the flow of the Xingu River, leading to a mass decline in fish that traditional riverside dwellers and Indigenous people rely on.
- The Belo Sun project was legally challenged last year, prompting supporters to harass and intimidate those who oppose the mine’s construction; tensions in the region remain high.
Series of small dams pose big cumulative risk to Amazon’s fish and people
- Small hydropower plants and small-scale fish farming in the Brazilian Amazon basin are often thought to cause negligible environmental harm, yet a new study reveals their cumulative damage is greatly underestimated and can be more impactful than large dams.
- Dwindling fish populations caused by the construction of thousands of small dams has impacted the livelihoods of millions of Indigenous and riverside people who depend on fishing for food, income and culture.
- Small hydropower plants and aquaculture farming are encouraged through economic incentives, simple licensing procedures, and loose requirements for environmental impact assessments before construction.
- More than 350 dam proposals in the Amazon basin are under consideration and 98 medium-sized dams will be prioritized in Brazil as of next year, ensuring the construction of hydropower plants will continue.
Sulawesi hydropower dam could flood important archaeological sites
- A Jakarta-based hydropower company aims to dam the Karama River in western Sulawesi as part of a clean energy project to help wean the country off of coal.
- An inundation map shows that the dam could raise the river’s water level to 62 meters (203 feet) above sea level, potentially damaging important archaeological sites in the Karama valley.
- In 2020, archaeologists announced they had found Indonesia’s oldest-known rice strain in the Karama valley, an important region in the Austronesian expansion, thought to be one of the most expansive prehistoric human migrations.
‘Europe’s rarest fish’ numbers spawn hopes for species’ survival
- The asprete, a rare freshwater fish found in Romania, was once considered extinct after dam construction destroyed much of its habitat.
- The fish’s existence was confirmed by surveys conducted in the last 50 years but only a few were thought to survive in Romania’s Vâlsan River. In 2020, an official estimate suggested only 7 to 10 individuals remained.
- However, a 2022 survey expedition found 58 specimens across a 15-kilometer (9.3-mile) stretch of the river, raising hopes that the species could be saved from extinction.
- Experts say conservation efforts, as well as more robust survey attempts, led to the higher population count.
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
‘They paid for it with misery’: Q&A with Chile dam critic Jose Marihuan Ancanao
- Jose Marihuan Ancanao, president of the Ayin Mapu La Peña community, spoke to Mongabay’s Maxwell Radwin about the impact of hydropower plants in parts of the Chilean Andes that are home to Indigenous people with a spiritual connection to rivers and the surrounding mountains.
- Marihuan was relocated in the early 2000s by a different hydropower plant and, although relocation isn’t a threat this time around, is witnessing the construction of another mega dam near his community.
- The 90-megawatt Rucalhue power plant has resulted in the felling of nationally protected trees sacred to the Pehuenche and, once finished, would flood some ancestral land.
Dam construction ignites Indigenous youth movement in southern Chile
- Dam construction on the Bío Bío watershed has plagued Indigenous Mapuche-Pehuenche communities in south-central Chile for decades, with many families having to relocate due to flooding of ancestral lands.
- The 90-megawatt Rucalhue hydropower plant, located near the town of Santa Bárbara, is the latest project causing controversy among local communities, who say they’re sick of battling infrastructure projects that disrespect their culture and traditions.
- Young people have been particularly outspoken against the project, staging sit-ins at the work site, sending petitions to government agencies, and helping organize a local plebiscite.
- Hydropower plants, while less polluting than many other forms of energy generation, still require the clearing of trees and the disrupting of river flows, which can have a significant impact on surrounding ecosystems.
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.
Putting a price on water: Can commodification resolve a world water crisis?
- In 2018, a trader listed water on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and then in 2020 introduced a futures market so consumers can factor the cost of water into their investment plans. After a slow start, traders expect the market to grow more strongly in 2023.
- Some analysts see this as a positive step, allowing market adjustments to provide consumers with the cheapest and most efficient way of buying water. Others disagree, saying that water, like air, should not be commodified as it is a fundamental human right and must be available to all.
- Critics fear that creating a water market is a first step toward a future in which just a few companies will be able to charge market rents for what should be a free natural resource. Huge questions remain over water allocations for industry, agribusiness and smallholders, cities, and traditional and Indigenous peoples.
- The clash between these economic and socioenvironmental worldviews isn’t just occurring internationally. The conflict over water regulation is evident in many nations, including Brazil, which lays claim to the world’s biggest supply of freshwater, and Chile, currently suffering from its most severe drought ever.
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.
With less than 10 years to save Sumatran elephants, what’s being done?
- The provinces of North Sumatra and Aceh in Indonesia’s embattled and highly deforested island of Sumatra are some of the last holdouts for the critically endangered Sumatran elephant.
- With the clock running out to save them, and extractive industries like oil palm fragmenting their habitat, pushing them to the brink, villagers are taking measures into their own hands by reducing human-elephant conflict to save the species from further harm.
- Also in North Sumatra lies a controversial planned hydroelectric dam site in the last habitat of the critically endangered Tapanuli orangutan, a project that has also claimed 16 human lives in less than two years.
- On the Mongabay Newscast this week, Leif Cocks, founder of the International Elephant Project and the Orangutan Project, weighs in on the status of the Sumatran elephant and the Tapanuli orangutan.
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.
Engineers bet on a miracle to bring Nepal’s holy river back to life
- Officials in Nepal hope to start reviving the sacred Bagmati River that runs through Kathmandu with the help of a rainwater reservoir.
- The Dhap Dam is expected to go into operation in October, when it will start providing water for the Bagmati during the dry season — a period when the river can shrink to just 3% of its monsoon peak.
- Unlike most other rivers in Nepal, the Bagmati doesn’t flow from the Himalayan icepack, and instead is fed by springs that, in recent decades, have dried up as a result of urbanization.
- But with the river so polluted that a study declared it “not suitable for aquatic life,” even those behind the project acknowledge that the best they can hope for is to improve its condition, not bring it back to life.
‘Cursed’ dam project in orangutan habitat claims 16th life in less than 2 years
- A tunnel collapse at the site of a planned hydroelectric dam in Sumatra has killed a Chinese construction worker, bringing the death toll at the project site to 16 in the space of less than two years.
- The project is already hugely controversial because it sits in the only known habitat of the Tapanuli orangutan, a critically endangered species that scientists warn will be pushed further toward extinction if their habitat is fragmented by the dam.
- Opponents of the Chinese-backed project have long argued that the site’s topography and location near a fault line make it “wholly unsuitable” for a large-scale infrastructure project, and that the developers should abandon it.
‘Water always wins,’ so why are we fighting it?
- On this week’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast we examine humanity’s approach to harnessing water, and how the current “us-first” mindset is actually exacerbating our water access problems.
- Journalist and author Erica Gies joins us to discuss the concept of ‘slow’ solutions to water shortages presented in her new book "Water Always Wins: Thriving in an Age of Drought and Deluge," and how communities can work with water rather than against it.
- Gies discusses how hydrologists, engineers, and urban planners are creating 'slow' water projects with traditional hydrological knowledge, which are less invasive ways of harnessing water, in places such as Chennai, India.
On hazardous mine tailings dams, ‘safety first’ should be the rule (commentary)
- A mine tailings dam in Madagascar has failed at least twice this year, sending hazardous wastewater into a lagoon relied on by locals for drinking and subsistence fishing, and allegedly killing hundreds of fish.
- Activists say Rio Tinto refuses to accept responsibility for the fish or water pollution, and that this is not an isolated incident: tailings dams are failing with increasing frequency and severity all over the world.
- “Safety First” is a new set of guidelines toward more responsible tailings storage that prioritizes safety over cost, which companies and investors should heed, a new op-ed argues.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Beyond boundaries: Earth’s water cycle is being bent to breaking point
- The hydrological cycle is a fundamental natural process for keeping Earth’s operating system intact. Humanity and civilization are intimately dependent on the water cycle, but we have manipulated it vastly and destructively, to suit our needs.
- We don’t yet know the full global implications of human modifications to the water cycle. We do know such changes could lead to huge shifts in Earth systems, threatening life as it exists. Researchers are asking where and how they can measure change to determine if the water cycle is being pushed to the breaking point.
- Recent research has indicated that modifications to aspects of the water cycle are now causing Earth system destabilization at a scale that modern civilization might not have ever faced. That is already playing out in extreme weather events and long-term slow-onset climate alterations, with repercussions we don’t yet understand.
- There are no easy or simple solutions. To increase our chances of remaining in a “safe living space,” we need to reverse damage to the global hydrological cycle with large-scale interventions, including reductions in water use, and reversals of deforestation, land degradation, soil erosion, air pollution and climate change.
First gharial hatchlings spotted in nearly two decades in Nepal’s Karnali River
- Twenty-eight gharial hatchlings have been spotted in a tributary of Nepal’s Karnali River, the first sign of successful nesting in this waterway in at least 16 years.
- The discovery by villagers living near Bardiya National Park came on June 15, two days before World Crocodile Day, and indicates the critically endangered species is on the road to recovery.
- Nepal is home to about 200 breeding gharials, and since 1978 has carried out conservation and breeding programs for the species.
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.”
China-funded dam could disrupt key Argentine glaciers and biodiversity
- Two dams are being built on the 380-kilometer (236-mile) Santa Cruz River in Argentina’s Patagonia, threatening glacier movements and endemic wildlife that rely on the surrounding wetlands.
- Several Indigenous Mapuche communities, who consider the area to be important to their cultural heritage, say officials failed to consult with them before starting the project.
- Despite protests, lawsuits and court orders to pause construction, work on the complex, part of the China-funded Belt and Road Initiative, has continued.
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.
Death of last river dolphin in Laos rings alarm bells for Mekong population
- Earlier this year, the last Irrawaddy river dolphin in a transboundary pool between Cambodia and Laos became entangled in fishing gear and died, signifying the extinction of the species in Laos.
- The transboundary subpopulation had dwindled from 17 individuals in 1993, with experts blaming a range of factors — from the use of gill nets and other illegal fishing practices, to overfishing, genetic isolation, and the effects of upstream dams on river flow and prey availability.
- With the loss, there are now just an estimated 89 Irrawaddy dolphins left in the Mekong River, all within a 180-km (110-mi) stretch in Cambodia, where they face the same range of threats that wiped out the transboundary group.
- Authorities and conservationists say they are now resolved to strengthen protections and improve public awareness of the dolphins’ vulnerability to ensure the species has a future in the Mekong.
Dams on Brazil’s Jamanxim River: The advancing assault on the environment and Indigenous peoples in the Tapajós basin (commentary)
- Brazil’s electrical authorities have given the go-ahead for studies to prepare for building three large Amazonian dams that would flood Indigenous lands and protected areas for biodiversity.
- The decision shows that Brazil’s presidential administration is confident that the National Congress will approve the bill submitted by President Bolsonaro to open Indigenous lands to hydroelectric dams, and probably also allow dams to continue to be built without consulting impacted Indigenous peoples.
- The decision also shows that Brazil’s electrical authorities continue to ignore inconvenient information on climate change, the financial viability of Amazonian dams and their many social and environmental impacts, as well as the country’s better energy options.
- This text is translated and expanded from the author’s column on the Amazônia Real website. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
Chinese investment in Latin America plagues people and nature: Report
- A report from the Collective on Chinese Financing and Investments, Human Rights and the Environment (CICDHA) lays out the impact that Chinese-funded infrastructure, energy and mining projects have had in Latin America.
- The report looked at 26 projects in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela.
- It found almost all of them contributed to deforestation and water pollution, as well as human rights violations against local and Indigenous communities.
- CICDHA’s report lays out numerous recommendations for improving the behavior of companies carrying out projects in Latin America, but expresses doubt about China’s willingness to make a good-faith attempt at improvements.
AI model shows how Amazon dams can be made less environmentally damaging
- Researchers have developed a model using artificial intelligence to analyze the environmental impacts of 351 hydropower dam projects currently under evaluation in the Amazon Basin.
- The model aims to provide information that would help planners and policymakers optimize the capacity and location of new dams to minimize their negative impacts.
- It also shows, however, that no proposed dam could ever have zero impact across all the environmental criteria, and that social impacts on local communities remain far too complex to model with AI.
- While other researchers have welcomed the new way of modeling the risks, they recommend an end to high-capacity hydropower projects in the Amazon and a greater focus on solar and wind power instead.
Crackdown on villagers highlights heavy hand of Indonesia’s ‘strategic’ projects
- The heavy-handed arrest of 67 people, including 13 children, by police in Indonesia has shone a spotlight on long-simmering opposition to a planned mine in Central Java province.
- Those arrested are residents of Wadas village, the site of a planned mine that would provide the rocks needed to build a nearby dam.
- The villagers have opposed the mining plan for years, citing environmental and social concerns.
- Rights groups and legal aid advocates accuse the police of using excessive violence, but the government says the project will go ahead regardless.
Déjà vu for Indigenous villagers in Brazil as floods leave them homeless again
- A community of Indigenous Pataxó and Pataxó Hãhãhãe peoples has been made homeless for the second time in three years after the rain-swollen Paraopeba River flooded their houses and swept away their possessions.
- In 2019, the same village was left uninhabitable after the collapse of a tailings dam belonging to mining giant Vale polluted the river, causing health problems among the community and taking away their access to clean water.
- Authorities say the community can’t return to Naô Xohã village because their houses and land are now contaminated by heavy metals from the Paraopeba River’s toxic mud; the residents are currently sheltering in local schools and rely on donations.
- They are now fighting to be relocated to new land, but are still waiting for a final resolution from Vale after three years of negotiations.
In Bolivia, Indigenous groups fear the worst from dam project on Beni River
- More than 5,000 Indigenous people would be impacted by flooding from the construction of two dams in Bolivia, according to Indigenous organizations and environmentalists.
- Successive governments have mulled the Chepete-El Bala hydroelectric project for more than half a century, and the current administration of President Luis Acre has now revived it as a national priority.
- While Indigenous groups have successfully rejected the plan in the past, this time a group of 10 Indigenous organizations have signed an agreement with the state energy company approving feasibility studies.
- If completed, the reservoirs for the project would cover a combined area larger than Bolivia’s capital, La Paz, and inundate an area that’s home to thousands of plant and animal species.
China’s building spree in Nepal casts shadow over Himalayan ecosystem
- China’s role in Nepal has intensified in the period since the 2015 earthquake, mostly in the form of investments in rebuilding projects. In 2019 alone, China initiated a series of projects, including factories and hydropower plants, worth $2.4 billion in Nepal.
- Many of the infrastructure projects run through sensitive environments, including national parks, and the construction of hydropower plants has been criticized by environmental organizations and local communities for destroying river ecosystems.
- For example, work on the Rasuwagadhi hydroelectric project, part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, resumed in 2016, despite protests from locals who blamed the dam for mass fish deaths.
Holy loach! Fish missing for decades rediscovered in Turkey’s Batman River
- Researchers in Turkey recently rediscovered the Batman River loach, a species that hadn’t been seen since 1974.
- There have been many prior unsuccessful attempts to find the species, leading to speculation that it may have gone extinct.
- While very little is known about the species, experts believe that it was impacted by the construction of the Batman dam.
- The scientists found the species in a part of the river that’s upstream of the dam.
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.
‘Unequal exchange’ for Brazil community in shadow of Anglo American mine
- Mining giant Anglo American makes huge profits from its Minas-Rio iron ore mine in Brazil, but leaves little behind for the local communities whose lives have been upended by its operations, a new report says.
- Transparency of the mine’s financial flows falls short of international best practices, while its use of local water resources has reportedly led to shortages for the community, according to the report by the Brazilian Institute for Social and Economic Analysis (IBASE) and Publish What You Pay.
- The 529-kilometer (328-mile) pipeline that Anglo American uses to transport its processed ore to port ruptured twice in 2018, spilling almost 1,000 metric tons of iron ore into surrounding rivers, contaminating farmland, pastures and water sources.
- The local mayor where the mine is located says the municipality would go broke without the mine and that Anglo American has made an active effort to support sustainable development, although residents fearful of a breach of the mine’s tailings dam disagree.
New transport infrastructure is opening the Amazon to global commerce
- Tim Killeen provides an update on the state of the Amazon in his new book “A Perfect Storm in the Amazon Wilderness – Success and Failure in the Fight to save an Ecosystem of Critical Importance to the Planet.”
- The book provides an overview of the topics most relevant to the conservation of the Amazon’s biodiversity, ecosystem services and Indigenous cultures, as well as a description of the conventional and sustainable development models vying for space within the regional economy.
- Mongabay will publish excerpts from the Killeen’s book, which will be released by The White Horse Press in serial format over the course of the next year. In this second installment, we provide a section from Chapter Two: “Global Competition Drives Bulk Transport Systems”.
- This post is an except from a book. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Railroad and mine projects stir up anxiety in rural Brazil communities
- Construction of the FIOL railway line linking a deep-water port in Bahia state to the BR-153 highway in Tocantins state is fully underway following a successful bid by the region’s largest iron ore miner.
- Besides transporting 18 million metric tons of ore per year, the railroad will have capacity to transport an additional 42 million tons of cargo, including grain grown in the Matopiba region, Brazil’s fastest-growing agricultural frontier in the Cerrado biome
- In the municipality of Caetité in Bahia, headquarters of the Pedra de Ferro mine and starting point of the stretch of railway to be operated by the mining company, people are reporting cases of property and environmental damage and broken agreements with the community.
- Residents say they fear that agribusiness will invade their still-untitled lands, and that a tailings dam proposed by the miner could collapse with deadly consequences.
Vale told Brazil communities they were in danger. They say Vale wants their land
- Residents moved from their homes in Brazil’s Minas Gerais state over fears of impending collapses of dams operated by miner Vale are accusing the company of trying to take over their land.
- The first such evacuation was ordered in February 2019 in the municipality of Barão de Cocais, two weeks after the Brumadinho dam disaster killed 458 people.
- In the two and a half years since then, more communities have been moved, with affected residents saying Vale is stonewalling them on compensation.
- A document drawn up by state prosecutors in March confirms that there’s been interest in prospecting for minerals on the vacated land, although Vale has not responded to the accusation.
New map identifies risks, and potential sanctuaries, for Brazil’s diving duck
- The Brazilian merganser, a duck that’s the mascot for the country’s waterways, is among the top 10 most threatened birds in the world, with only about 250 individuals left in the wild.
- As part of conservation efforts, scientists have recently published a map showing the critically endangered species’ distribution in its remaining habitat, as well as identifying suitable new areas where it could thrive.
- The map also highlights the threats to this bioindicator species that needs clear, pollutant-free water to survive; the main threat comes from the damming of rivers, which affects water flow and quality for the mergansers.
- The researchers found 36 small hydropower plants planned for areas close to sites where the species lives, potentially impacting 504 square kilometers (196 square miles), or 4.1% of the total area suitable for the duck’s habitat.
Dam builder denies responsibility as logjam chokes river in Malaysian Borneo
- Tons of wood debris has clogged up the Baleh and Rajang rivers in Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo.
- The logjam originated in the headwaters of the Baleh, where a hydroelectric dam is currently under construction and logging activity is being carried out nearby.
- The logjam originated in the headwaters of the Baleh, where a hydroelectric dam is currently under construction and logging activity is being carried out nearby.
- But the state-owned utility building dam denies responsibility, pointing to logging upstream.
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.
Planned dam in Philippine national park catches flak from activists, officials
- A subsidiary of the San Miguel Corporation, one of the largest companies in the Philippines, has proposed a $500 million hydroelectric project that will overlap with a national park on Panay Island.
- Northwest Panay Peninsula Natural Park holds some of the central Philippines’ last stands of intact lowland rainforest, is home to endangered species including hornbills and the Visayan warty pig, and is a vital watershed for Panay and neighboring islands.
- The project is still not approved, and a growing coalition of activists and local governments opposes the plan.
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.
Former dam executive found guilty in the killing of Berta Cáceres
- The alleged ringleader of the 2016 killing of environmental and Indigenous rights activist Berta Cáceres was convicted of murder by a Honduran court on Monday.
- Roberto David Castillo Mejía, the ex-head of the dam company Desa, was found guilty of participating in the assassination of Cáceres. The court decision was unanimous.
- Cáceres was gunned down in her home on March 2, 2016 at the age of 44 after leading opposition to the Agua Zarca dam on the Rio Galcarque, a river that holds spiritual significance for the Lenca people.
- Cáceres was recognized for her activism in 2015 when she won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize.
Amazon dams: No clean water, fish dying, then the pandemic came
- Villagers living near the Teles Pires and São Manoel dams in Brazil’s Mato Grosso state — including the Apiaká, Kayabí and Munduruku peoples — attest to poor water quality, lack of potable water, increased malaria and rashes since the dams were built on their river. They also say there has been little response from the dam companies.
- Indigenous peoples say the Brazilian hydroelectric projects have altered river ecology along with thousands of years of cultural practice, especially their fishing livelihood. Migratory fish and other game fish have been greatly diminished, so residents must now resort to fishing at night.
- Once the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in the region, lack of clean water for bathing became even more urgent, while disappearing fish in daily diets made it harder to get food or isolate in riverside villages. Only under judicial order did dam companies recently improve water supply infrastructure.
- Experts trace these adverse impacts back to the dams’ planning stages: with the construction companies skipping legally mandated steps, not consulting Indigenous peoples as required, and failing to calculate cumulative impacts of multiple dam projects. Villagers are now monitoring impacts — and some are studying the law.
Brazil’s Belo Monte Dam: Struggle for the Volta Grande enters a new phase (Commentary)
- A June 17th judicial decision suspends the permission granted on February 8th by Brazil’s environmental agency to allow even more water to be diverted from the Xingu River.
- Even without the additional diversion of water, the 130-km “Volta Grande” stretch receives insufficient water for its unique ecosystems and for its indigenous and traditional river-dwelling inhabitants.
- The new decision is at high risk of being overturned by means of Brazil’s “security suspension” laws that allow any ruling that would “damage” the economy to be reversed.
- The new decision could also be neutralized by the Bolsonaro government after technical studies are completed in December. It could also be overridden by a new interministerial group that is about to be decreed. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
After two collapses, a third Vale dam at ‘imminent risk of rupture’
- Vale, the Brazilian mining company responsible for two deadly dam collapses since 2015, has another dam that’s at “imminent risk of rupture,” a government audit warns.
- The Xingu dam at Vale’s Alegria mine in Mariana municipality, Minas Gerais state, has been retired since 1998, but excess water in the mining waste that it’s holding back threatens to liquefy the embankment and spark a potentially disastrous collapse.
- Liquefaction also caused the collapse of a Vale tailings dam in 2019 in Brumadinho municipality, also in Minas Gerais, that killed nearly 300 people; the 2015 collapse of another Vale dam, in Mariana in 2015, caused extensive pollution and is considered Brazil’s worst environmental disaster to date.
- Vale has denied the risk of a collapse at the Xingu dam and says it continues to monitor the structure ahead of its decommissioning; regulators, however, say the company still hasn’t carried out requested measures to improve the structure’s safety, and have ordered an evacuation of the immediate vicinity.
Irrigation dams threaten Thailand’s tiger forests, say conservationists
- A plan to construct seven dams in Thailand’s Dong Phayayen-Khao Yai (DPKY) Forest Complex could cause widespread habitat loss and sever important wildlife corridors, activists warn.
- The DPKY Forest Complex is home to one of Thailand’s two remaining breeding Indochinese tiger populations.
- Thai authorities have met opposition over the proposals in the past, but claim the dams will help to solve flood and drought problems in nearby regions.
- Conservationists warn the plans could jeopardize the forest complex’s World Heritage status, which is due for review this July.
‘Listening to communities must go beyond ticking compliance boxes’, says Peter Kallang, a Kenyah leader
- The Malaysian state of Sarawak was until recently home to some of the last nomadic peoples of Borneo, who roamed its wild and rich rainforests as they had done since time immemorial. Starting in the early 1980s, industrial logging companies moved deep into Sarawak’s hinterland, tearing down forests, forcing forest peoples from their traditional lands, and laying the groundwork for large-scale conversion of biodiverse ecosystems into monoculture plantations.
- Sarawak’s Indigenous peoples put up resistance against these state-backed incursions into their traditional territories. One of the most dramatic outcomes of these efforts came in 2016, when the Chief Minister of Sarawak cancelled the Baram mega-dam project.
- Peter Kallang, a member of the Kenyah people who runs the NGO SAVE Rivers, was one of the leaders of the Baram campaign, helping coordinate, organize, and mobilize Indigenous communities that would have been most impacted by the dam. Now Kallang, SAVE Rivers, and other groups are fighting to defend traditional Indigenous lands against logging by Samling, a Malaysian timber company.
- Kallang spoke about his background, Indigenous-led advocacy, the conservation sector’s shortcomings in recognizing Indigenous rights, and other topics during a June 2021 interview with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler.
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.
Amazon’s Belo Monte dam cuts Xingu River flow 85%; a crime, Indigenous say
- In February, IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental agency permitted Belo Monte mega-dam operator Norte Energia to drastically reduce flows to the Volta Grande (Big Bend) of the Xingu River for at least a year. That decision reversed an earlier ruling to maintain much higher Xingu River flows and the fishery — as legally required.
- The flow reduction will leave 70% of usually-flooded forest dry this season, causing massive fish mortality and diminished reproduction, experts say. Community group Xingu Vivo Para Sempre denounced the decision as “a death sentence for the Xingu” and demanded IBAMA’s and Norte Energia’s presidents be “criminally prosecuted.”
- Norte Energia has funded projects to mitigate the reduced flow, collecting and dropping fruit into the river for fish to feed on, and releasing captive-bred fish. But scientists say these approaches are unscientific and will likely be ineffective, and can’t make up for the loss of the river’s seasonal flood pulse, upon which fish depend.
- Residents say the government has spread misinformation, telling Brazilian consumers that their electricity bills would go up if Belo Monte released more water to maintain the Xingu’s ecosystem — something Norte Energia is obligated to do. At present, water levels on the Volta Grande have not been restored.
‘The river will bleed red’: Indigenous Filipinos face down dam projects
- For more than five decades, Indigenous communities in the northern Philippines have pushed back against the planned construction of hydropower dams on the Chico River system.
- The river is of great importance to Indigenous communities in the provinces of Kalinga and Mountain Province, who call it their “river of life” and have depended on it for generations.
- The Upper Tabuk and Karayan dams have been proposed in some form or another since the 1970s, but are now backed by corporations created by Indigenous groups, causing divisions among communities.
- Critics of the dams have questioned the Indigenous consent process, a requirement for a project on tribal lands, alleging that some of the community support was obtained through bribery.
Indigenous community wins recognition of its land rights in Panama
- A ruling by Panama’s Supreme Court of Justice in November 2020 led to the official creation of a comarca, or protected Indigenous territory, for the Naso Tjër Di people in northern Panama.
- The 1,600-square-kilometer (620-square-mile) comarca is the result of a decades-long effort to secure the Naso’s land rights.
- Panama’s former president had vetoed legislation creating the comarca in 2018, which he said was unconstitutional because it overlapped with two established protected areas.
- Other Indigenous groups in Panama with longstanding comarcas still struggle to hold back outside incursions for projects such as dams and power transmission lines.
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.
Indigenous leaders killed in Philippines were ‘red-tagged’ over dam opposition
- The killing of nine Indigenous leaders by police during an operation in the central Philippines on Dec. 30, 2020, has drawn widespread condemnation from environmental and human rights groups, politicians, lawyers, and Catholic bishops.
- Police allege that those killed, and another 16 arrested, were supporters of the NPA, the armed wing of the banned communist party.
- But supporters of the Indigenous Tumandok community on Panay Island say they were targeted for their opposition to two dam projects in their ancestral domain.
- One of the projects, on the Jalaur River, is largely funded through a $208 million loan from the South Korean government.
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.
Ribeirinhos win right to waterside Amazon homeland lost to Belo Monte dam
- Some 40,000 people — mostly peasant farmers, fisherfolk, traditional families (living from the collection of forest products), Indigenous people, and ribeirinhos — were evicted to make way for the Belo Monte dam, constructed between June 2011 and November 2019.
- The ribeirinhos (traditional riverine people) were not politically well organized at the time, and along with many others, were forced out of their traditional riverside homes and livelihoods. Most moved into urban housing developments away from the Xingu River, where they were forced to pay rent and acclimate themselves to urban life.
- But over the years the ribeirinhos gained political savvy. Negotiating with Norte Energia, the consortium that built and runs Belo Monte, they gained the right to establish a collectively owned Ribeirinho Territory beside the Belo Monte reservoir.
- Under the agreement, 315 families are each to be provided with 14 hectares (34 acres) for individual use. Added to that are areas for collective use and a forest reserve — a combined total of 20,341 hectares (50,263 acres). However, with the deal now seemingly sealed, Norte Energia has backpedaled, wanting to propose a different agreement.
Belo Monte dam’s water demands imperil Amazon communities, environment
- Norte Energia, the builder and operator of the controversial Belo Monte mega-dam is pushing for implementation of a much disputed “consensus hydrogram” — a plan to annually manipulate water releases into the Xingu River’s Volta Grande (Big Bend), with estimated peak April releases ranging from a mere 4,000 – 8,000 m3/s.
- Noting that April average historical river flows in the Volta Grande before the dam was built were 19,985 m3/s, analysts say this dearth of water flow will prevent and imperil annual fish reproduction. One Volta Grande expert estimates that, using the so-called consensus hydrogram plan, at least 80% of Volta Grande fish will die.
- Documents from IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental agency, which first came to light publicly on December 3, acknowledge “grave and irreparable impacts” from the Belo Monte dam, and signal an urgent need to revise Norte Energia’s planned consensus hydrogram.
- Two recent studies say fish are decreasing dramatically in diets within Belo Monte’s influence area, causing food insecurity. Norte Energia claims fish quantities sold locally remain the same, but their data may mask significantly increased fishing effort, and the need to fish more widely, beyond previous fishing areas.
Will a newly discovered ape species face a dammed future?
- As with many animals in Sumatra, the newly described 8th ape species are unique creatures that are critically threatened, with a maximum of 800 individuals estimated to be living in an increasingly fragmented habitat.
- First described in 2017 after its habits and DNA proved them to be unique, the Tapanuli orangutan faces an uncertain future.
- A hydroelectric dam proposed for the center of the animals' tiny territory challenges this special species' chances of survival, as well as that of 23 other threatened species which also live in the area.
- This episode of the podcast speaks with a biologist who helped discover its uniqueness, Dr. Puji Rianti of IPB University in Bogor, and Mongabay staff writer Hans Nicholas Jong in Jakarta, who has been covering the controversy over the project, as it's been called into question by activists and funders alike and faces numerous delays.
Deadly anniversary: Rio Doce, Brazil’s worst environmental disaster, 5 years on
- On November 5, 2015, the Fundão iron mine tailings dam failed, pouring 50 million tons of mud and toxic waste into Brazil’s Rio Doce, killing 19 people, polluting the river, contaminating croplands, devastating fish and wildlife, and polluting drinking water with toxic sludge along 650 kilometers (400 miles) of the waterway.
- Five years on, the industry cleanup has failed to restore the river and watershed, according to residents, with fisheries and fields still poisoned and less productive. Access to clean water also remains difficult, while unexplained health problems have arisen, though some cleanup and livelihood projects are yielding hope.
- Rio Doce valley inhabitants remain frustrated by what they see as a slow response to the environmental disaster by the dam’s owner, Samarco, a joint venture of Vale and BHP Billiton, two of the world’s biggest mining companies, and also by the Brazilian government. Roughly 1.6 million people were originally impacted by the disaster.
- The count of those still affected is unknown, with alleged heavy metal-related health risks cited: Maria de Jesus Arcanjo Peixoto tells of her young grandson, sickened by a mysterious illness: ”We’re left in doubt… But he was three months old when the dam burst. And all the food, the milk, the feed for the cows — it all came from the mud.”
Brazil’s Bem Querer dam: An impending Amazon disaster (commentary)
- Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has announced his administration’s priorities for Amazon dams, including the planned Bem Querer dam on the Rio Branco in the far-northern state of Roraima.
- Bem Querer is primarily intended to increase the energy supply to industries in locations outside of Amazonia, rather than for residents of Roraima.
- Probable environmental impacts include blocking fish migrations and flooding a riparian forest that possesses extraordinary bird diversity. Downstream flow alteration would impact protected areas, including two Ramsar wetland biodiversity sites. Riverside dwellers would also be impacted.
- Sediment flow blockage would impact fisheries and the unique Anavilhanas Archipelago, a spectacular Brazilian national park. These adverse impacts need to be fully evaluated before a decision to build is made. This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Mongabay explores Sumatra, a land like no other
- Sumatra is the only place in the world where tigers, elephants, rhinos and orangutans all live together in the same expanse of rainforest. Its plant life is also extremely diverse.
- For a new edition of the Mongabay Explores podcast series, we will explore the island's incredible biological richness and environmental challenges.
- On this first episode, host Mike DiGirolamo speaks with Sumatran winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize Rudi Putra and biologist Greg McCann, who provide a fascinating look at the incredible biodiversity of this, the world's sixth largest island.
- A new episode will air approximately every two weeks, subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast via your podcast provider of choice to hear them all.
Brazil’s Amazon dam plans: Ominous warnings of future destruction (commentary)
- Brazil’s current 10-year Energy Expansion Plan calls for three more large dams in Amazonia by 2029, and Brazil’s 2050 National Energy Plan lists many more.
- Both plans contain ominous passages explaining that the list of dams could expand if “uncertainty” is resolved regarding current regulations protecting Indigenous peoples and protected areas for biodiversity.
- Brazil’s National Congress is considering bills to eliminate environmental licensing; a bill submitted by President Jair Bolsonaro would allow dams on Indigenous lands. Brazil’s dam-building plans to satisfy 2050 energy demand extend to neighboring Amazonian nations, including Peru and Bolivia.
- The 2050 plan essentially admits that dams on Indigenous lands and within other protected areas are not necessary because the electricity could be generated by offshore wind power. This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Why the health of the Amazon River matters to us all: An interview with Michael Goulding
- Like the rainforest which takes its name, the Amazon is the largest and most biodiverse river on the planet. The river and its tributaries are a critical thoroughfare for an area the size of the continental United States and function as a key source of food and livelihoods for millions of people. Yet despite its vastness and importance, the mighty Amazon is looking increasingly vulnerable due to human activities.
- Few people understand more about the Amazon’s ecology and the wider role it plays across the South American continent than Michael Goulding, an aquatic ecologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) who has worked in the region since the 1970s studying issues ranging from the impact of hydroelectric dams to the epic migration of goliath catfishes. Goulding has written and co-authored some of the most definitive books and papers on the river, its resident species, and its ecological function.
- In recognition of his lifetime of advancing conservation efforts in the Amazon, the Field Museum today honored Goulding with the Parker/Gentry Award. The Award — named after ornithologist Theodore A. Parker III and botanist Alwyn Gentry who were killed in a plane crash during an aerial survey of an Ecuadorian cloud forest in 1993 — is given each year to “an outstanding individual, team or organization in the field of conservation biology whose efforts have had a significant impact on preserving the world’s natural heritage and whose actions and approach can serve as a model to others.”
- In a September 2020 interview ahead of the prize ceremony, Goulding spoke with Mongabay about his research and the current state of the Amazon.
Mercury from gold mining contaminates Amazon communities’ staple fish
- The four species of fish most commonly consumed by Indigenous and riverine people in the Brazilian state of Amapá contain the highest concentrations of mercury.
- In some species, researchers found levels of mercury four times in excess of World Health Organization recommendations.
- The mercury comes from gold-mining activity, where it’s used to separate gold from ore before being burned off and washed into the rivers.
- The health impacts of mercury contamination are well-documented, and include damage to the central nervous system, potentially resulting in learning disabilities for children and tremors and difficulty walking for adults.
Infrastructure plans imperil Latin America’s forests: Analysis
- A recent analysis in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by social scientists, along with representatives of NGOs and funding organizations, warns of the danger to forests, communities and biodiversity as a result of planned infrastructure.
- The team writes that the planning process needs to be focused on projects that bring the most benefits to people and the environment.
- The authors advocate an approach that includes input from often-marginalized groups like Indigenous communities and looks to science to inform planning for large-scale projects.
Indonesia dam builder refuses new study to assess impact on orangutans
- A dam developer in Indonesia has rebuffed calls for an independent study to assess the impact of the project on the critically endangered Tapanuli orangutan.
- The species, numbering fewer than 800, is found only in the Batang Toru forest in Sumatra, which is also the site of a hydropower project that conservationists say threatens the survival of the great ape and livelihoods of local communities.
- The IUCN has led calls for an independent assessment, citing a litany of inaccurate and misleading claims stemming from the project developer’s various statements and publications.
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.
Ecuador races for emergency infrastructure as river’s collapse threatens dam
- The erosion has progressed at an accelerated rate and has reached other rivers, threatening a national highway and Indigenous communities.
- Studies commissioned by the Ecuadoran government call for emergency infrastructure to mitigate the erosion, which could reach the catchment dam of the Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric plant, with disastrous consequences.
- The Kichwa Indigenous communities affected by the oil spill four months ago say they are still waiting for justice from the government and the pipeline operators.
Deforestation in the Amazon is drying up the rest of Brazil: Report
- The center-west, south and part of the southeast regions of Brazil have seen rainfall well below average in recent years.
- Agriculture is the first sector to feel the effects of the drought, with drastic losses in production. Water supply and power generation have also been impacted.
- Agribusiness suffers the consequences of drought but also causes it: Deforestation of the Amazon to clear land for livestock, farming and logging affects the rainfall regime in Brazil and other Latin American countries.
- “South America is drying up as a result of the combined effects of deforestation and climate change”, says scientist Antonio Donato Nobre.
Mining industry releases first standard to improve safety of waste storage
- On Aug. 5, spurred by a deadly Brazilian dam disaster in early 2019, a partnership between the U.N. and industry leaders released new guidance for companies to manage their mining waste safely.
- The Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management “strives to achieve … zero harm to people and the environment with zero tolerance for human fatality,” according to its preamble.
- However, some environmental and human rights groups say the measures in the standard don’t go far enough.
More than 500 dams planned inside protected areas: Study
- More than 500 dams are either under construction or planned within protected areas over the next two decades, according to a new study.
- The study found that more than 1,200 large dams already exist within protected areas.
- The authors strongly encourage governments to avoid constructing dams in or near protected areas and instead to look toward renewable energies such as wind and solar.
- The researchers express concerns about ongoing rollbacks to environmental protections, especially amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dam that threatens orangutan habitat faces three-year delay
- Environmental, funding, and pandemic-related concerns may delay the construction of a controversial hydroelectric dam in Indonesia’s Sumatra Island by up to three years, officials say.
- The Batang Toru hydropower plant site is located in the only known habitat of the critically endangered Tapanuli orangutan, and conservationists have called for it to be scrapped or at least suspended to allow for an independent impact analysis.
- Major lenders including the World Bank’s International Financial Corporation and the Asian Development Bank have steered clear of the project, while main funder the Bank of China has promised a review in light of the environmental concerns.
- The IUCN has also issued a fact-checking report that debunks several claims by project developer PT North Sumatra Hydro Energy downplaying the impact of the plant on the orangutans and other wildlife in the area.
Life as an Amazon activist: ‘I don’t want to be the next Dorothy Stang’
- Socio-environmental activists are an endangered species in the Brazilian Amazon, with regularly occurring assassination-style killings like those of activists Chico Mendes in 1988 and Sister Dorothy Stang in 2005 creating an ongoing climate of fear.
- According to human rights watchdog Global Witness, Brazil in 2017 was the world’s most dangerous country for environmental acivists: 57 out of 201 deaths worldwide occurred in Brazil. Intimidation and murder of activists continues into the present.
- Activist Juma Xipaya saw the village she grew up in fundamentally changed by the building of the Belo Monte mega-dam. When she later exposed corruption and incompetence she faced death threats and now lives perpetually on guard.
- In recent years, Xipaya has been repeatedly pursued by a white pickup driven by two armed thugs, but police fail to respond to her pleas for help. The men eventually made an attempt on her life — a close call that almost killed her and her children.
Traditional villages dread living in shadow of Amazon tailings dams
- Mineração Rio do Norte (MRN), the world’s fourth largest bauxite producer, encroached on riverine communities beside the Trombetas River in the Brazilian Amazon in the 1970s. Over the years, MRN became notorious for its contamination of local waters with bauxite mining waste, residents say.
- To resolve that problem, the company built 26 tailings dams. The largest of these waste-holding impoundments covers 110 hectares (270 acres). The entire system for managing mining waste encompasses 1,700 hectares (4,200 acres) and is located within a national protected area.
- Brazil has suffered two catastrophic mining tailings dam collapses since 2015, leaving Trombetas riverine community residents concerned about the 26 MRN dams.
- Brazil’s National Agency of Mining has rated one of MRN’s dams as “high risk.” Fourteen more, should they fail, possess “social, environmental, economic and mortality risk.” MRN says its dams are safe. Locals are also worried over possible water contamination and loss of traditional livelihoods
Brazil could dynamite Amazon dolphin, turtle habitat for industrial waterway
- Brazil plans to excavate and dredge many millions of cubic meters of material, including the ecologically sensitive Lourencão Rocks, to create an industrial shipping channel on the Tocantins River in the Amazon. This article includes rarely seen video images of some of the endemic and threatened fish living in the Tocantins River rapids.
- Citing cost considerations, São Paulo-based DTA Engenharia plans to dump more than 5.6 million cubic meters of sand inside the Tocantins riverbanks, where Amazonian turtles now lay their eggs. The endangered Araguaian river dolphin would also be impacted.
- In September 2019, IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental agency, identified dozens of mistakes in DTA Engenharia’s environmental impact studies, which failed to list a dozen endangered fish, ignored the specialized riverine rock environment, and didn’t study turtles in most affected areas.
- IBAMA ordered DTA to redo fish and turtle studies, with new studies conducted on local traditional fisherfolk’s fishing practices. Six fisherfolk village associations near the Lourencão Rocks (35 kilometers of which are due to be dynamited and dredged) warn that the fishery and the unique traditional culture it supports are in peril.
Experts see environmental, social fallout in Indonesia’s infrastructure push
- The Indonesian government has announced a list of 89 priority projects, tagged at $100 billion, to jump-start the economy out of the current COVID-19-induced slump.
- To speed up the projects, the government has issued a new regulation on eminent domain that will make it easier to take over community lands, including those of indigenous groups, and degazette forests to allow them to be cleared, experts warn.
- The new regulation is the latest in a slate of deregulatory policies that conservationists, environmental activists and indigenous rights defenders say will harm the country’s biodiversity, its climate commitments, and its most vulnerable communities.
- Among the projects are nickel smelters that are applying to dump their toxic waste into the sea; a high-speed railway line that’s part of the China-backed Belt and Road Initiative; and a rice estate spanning 900,000 hectares (2.2 million acres) on carbon-dense peatlands.
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.
Norway’s sovereign wealth fund drops major Brazil miner, utility from its portfolio
- Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest, has put Brazilian mining titan Vale and the utility giant Eletrobras on its exclusion list.
- The decision is a major blow to the two companies and a signal that European investors are taking a hard line against Brazil’s backsliding on environmental protections.
- Vale was excluded for “serious environmental damage” and Eletrobras for contributing to “serious or systematic human rights violations.”
Forest clearing proceeds for dam in Sumatra despite locals’ land claims
- Road construction for a state-backed dam project has cleared forest in northern Sumatra, Indonesia.
- The Indonesian government says the dam will benefit locals by providing water and electricity.
- But many communities are disputing the land acquisition process as they are trying to get a certificate of ownership from the government.
- A fisherman and a construction worker drowned last month after being swept into the dam by flash floods, and a second worker is missing and feared dead.
Massive erosion likely due to hydropower dam causes oil spill on Ecuador’s Coca River
- Almost two months ago, Mongabay reported on the disappearance of the San Rafael waterfall, the highest in Ecuador. Geologists and hydrologists at the time warned that a phenomenon known as “regressive erosion” could affect upstream infrastructure.
- On April 7, two oil pipelines broke due to landslides along the river, and there is growing concern over the high rate at which the erosion is occurring.
- Oil has reached the Napo River and contaminated the water for downstream populations. If containment operations fail, it could reach the Amazon River in Peru.
- One expert interviewed by Mongabay said she believes the waterfall’s collapse and subsequent heavy erosion event are linked to the Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric plant, which was built and financed by Chinese companies.
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.
Why did Ecuador’s tallest waterfall suddenly disappear?
- The iconic San Rafael waterfall near the Chinese-built Coca Codo Sinclair dam stopped flowing on February 2, what happened?
- Experts hypothesize that the hydroelectric plant located upstream is indirectly related to the waterfall’s demise.
- The plant was constructed by Sinohydro and financed by China EximBank, and has had problems with cost overruns, worker strikes, and accidents such as the 2014 collapse of a pressure well that claimed the lives of 14 workers.
- The discussion about what happened with this celebrated waterfall on February 2 promises to occupy scientists for a long time.
Indonesia’s Lake Poso, an evolutionary ‘gem,’ threatened by dam
- Around the turn of the century, the area around Lake Poso in Indonesia was wracked with communal conflict that left hundreds of people dead and thousands displaced. In the wake of this violence, local leaders embraced a hydroelectric project they hoped would help unite vying religious communities for a brighter future.
- Fifteen years later, construction on the 515-megawatt dam is only half complete, and the company has informed the community it will need to reshape the mouth of the lake and dredge the river it feeds.
- Local fishers fear changes to the lake and river will bring an end to traditional fishing practices that sustain thousands of families, while conservationists fear disruption to a unique and ancient ecosystem brimming with endemic species.
- Activists have tried to mount a legal challenge to halt the project, but have been told by local authorities that they must first present scientific proof that the project will harm the ecosystem.
Amazon Tipping Point puts Brazil’s agribusiness, energy sector at risk: Top scientists
- Scientists are sounding the alarm: the Brazilian Amazon is dangerously close to, or may already be hitting, a disastrous rainforest-to-savanna tipping point, with heightened drought driven by regional and global climate change, rapidly rising deforestation and more numerous and intense wild fires.
- Overshooting the tipping point would not only be cataclysmic to Amazon biodiversity and release massive amounts of forest carbon destabilizing the planet’s climate further, it could also devastate Brazil’s economy by depriving agribusiness and hydroelectric energy production of water.
- Signs of deepening drought are already evident, as are serious repercussions. The $9.5 billion Belo Monte mega-dam for example, is already seeing greatly reduced seasonal flows in the Xingu River, a trend expected to worsen, potentially making the dam economically unviable, while also threatening the proposed Belo Sun goldmine.
- Reduced rainfall and a shorter growing season are also putting Brazilian agribusiness at risk. Even as scientists rush to develop heat and drought-resistant crops, many doubt new cultivars will keep pace with a changing climate. The Bolsonaro government is ignoring the economic threat posed by the tipping point
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.
Making a thriller out of Belo Monte hydro dam: Q&A with filmmaker Sabrina McCormick
- The construction of the controversial Belo Monte hydroelectric dam in the Brazilian Amazon is the narrative engine that drives Sequestrada, the first full-length film by U.S. cinematographer and sociologist Sabrina McCormick.
- The film, which came out in December on various streaming platforms, tells the story of Kamudjara, an indigenous girl, amid the expectations about the profound social and environmental changes that the construction will bring.
- In this interview with Mongabay, the director speaks about her creative process, her experience filming in the Amazon and perceptions about the social and cultural aspects, as well as the indigenous people’s sense of belonging to the forest.
- A former climate and environmental adviser to the Obama administration, McCormick also stresses the importance of blocking the advance of power generation models based on projects like Belo Monte.
Family seeks justice as probe into Indonesian activist’s death stalls
- The widow and colleagues of environmental activist Golfrid Siregar have called on national authorities in Indonesia to take over the investigation into his death from the provincial police.
- The provincial police concluded that Golfrid died in a drunken-driving motorbike crash last October, but his family and supporters say the circumstances around his death remain highly suspicious.
- His wife says Golfrid received multiple death threats related to his advocacy against a controversial hydropower plant, and a supervisor says other activists critical of that project were also harassed and threatened.
- The project developer has denied any involvement in the death and says it also wants the case resolved to clear its reputation.
Database offers new details on the dams that hold mining waste
- A new database called the Global Tailings Portal pulls together information on 1,700 dams that store waste, or tailings, from mines around the world.
- Around 100 publicly traded companies have shared information about their dams with GRID-Arendal, the Norwegian foundation that developed the database.
- The portal’s creators say that much of the information, including the size, location, and risk factors associated with the included dams, hasn’t been publicly available before, even as catastrophic dam failures continue to occur.
Use it, don’t lose it: Q&A with Amazon eco scientist Marcelino Guedes
- In an exclusive interview with Mongabay, Marcelino Guedes, a researcher at Brazil’s Amapá Federal University, talks about how important the management of traditional knowledge is for strengthening the forest economy in Brazil to overcome the paradigm that sees standing forest as an enemy of development.
- “Human practices can be managed to become the basis for conservation in Amazonia,” he says. Countering the idea that forests must be maintained in their virgin state, he says the rational use of a forest’s resources is the best way to create an effective conservation dynamic, considering the many pressures the region is undergoing.
- Guedes cites the Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis, which holds that small changes to the environment are crucial for increasing biodiversity. These disturbances can be natural, as in the case of a storm, or caused by humans, which is the case of the indigenous peoples of Amazonia, who have, over the last 5,000 years, been modifying and enriching the landscape through itinerant agriculture and dispersal of native species.
After a mine killed their river, a Brazil tribe fights for a new home
- A group of indigenous Pataxó and Pataxó Ha-ha-hãe are fighting to be relocated to a new home as the banks of the Paraopeba River where they live remains contaminated with heavy metals a year after the collapse of a tailings dam belonging to miner Vale.
- To date, Paraopeba’s waters still run dark with the mining waste, and there are no fish in it. Residents also complain of skin diseases and other health problems as a result of the contamination.
- In August 2019, the Nahô Xohã community filed a formal request with the Federal Prosecutor’s Office in Minas Gerais state for a temporary new home.
- The plan is to find a farm nearby of similar size to their current territory, where they can grow their own food and live with access to drinking water until the final reparation process is concluded by Vale.
Catastrophic Amazon tipping point less than 30 years away: study
- The Amazon rainforest generates half its own rainfall, but deforestation threatens to disrupt this cycle, shifting large parts of this ancient forest to dry, savanna habitat. Passing such a “tipping point” would have disastrous knock-on effects for climate and weather patterns regionally and globally.
- A recent study modelling the impact of proposed roads, hydropower and mining developments in the Amazon basin suggests that 21-43 percent of the Amazon’s original extent will be lost by 2050, putting it close to, or beyond, the tipping point for a biome shift in large parts of the region.
- Although development is not currently proceeding at the rapid rate predicted under various ambitious government initiatives, experts say that, even with no new Amazon infrastructure, continued deforestation could drive the biome to the tipping point in the next 15–30 years.
- A quick transition to zero deforestation is the only way to avert catastrophic change to the Amazon, say experts. But conservationists fear the political will is lacking as the Bolsonaro administration continues to slash protections. Backing indigenous land stewards could offer a solution.
Mass tree planting along India’s Cauvery River has scientists worried
- A plan to plant 2.42 billion trees by the Isha Foundation along the Cauvery River has attracted the chagrin of some scientists.
- While scientists say the project is well-meaning, they don’t believe it will cure the Cauvery River’s ills as promised.
- The Isha Foundation has yet to announce a number of details of the project, including what tree species will be planted.
- India’s rivers are suffering from numerous issues, but researchers contend mass tree planting is too simplistic to fix them all.
Amazon’s Munduruku stage daring Christmas raid to recover sacred urns
- In 2013, during the building of the Teles Pires dam in the Brazilian Amazon, the Teles Pires Hydroelectric Company (CHTP) dynamited Karobixexe (Seven Rapids), a sacred site of the Munduruku, Apiaká and Kayabi peoples. Located just outside an indigenous reserve, it received no government protection.
- Also during construction, the firm removed funeral urns from a sacred site without indigenous permission and refused to return them. In December, 70 Munduruku occupied the Natural History Museum in Alta Floresta in Mato Grosso state, and took back the 12 funeral urns, plus other artifacts of theirs.
- The construction of the Teles Pires dam and destruction of Karobixexe both occurred without prior consultation of the Mundurku as required under law according to the International Labor Organization’s Convention 169, of which Brazil is a signatory.
- Other human remains were found by CHTP and 270,000 artifacts were removed to which the Munduruku now have no access. They have also been barred from another sacred site, Dekoka’a (Monkey Hill) impacted by the construction of the São Manoel Hydroelectric Power Station, also located on the Teles Pires River.
Belo Monte boondoggle: Brazil’s biggest, costliest dam may be unviable
- The controversial Belo Monte mega-dam in Pará state has done significant socio environmental harm to the Xingu River and the indigenous and traditional people living beside it. Now it appears the dam may not be able to produce the electricity totals promised by its builders — an eventuality critics had long warned about.
- Project designers appear to have seriously misestimated the Xingu River’s flow rates and fluctuations between wet and dry seasons, while also not accounting for reductions in flow due to deforestation caused by rapidly expanding cattle ranches and soy plantations far upriver in Mato Grosso state.
- Climate change-induced droughts are also decreasing Xingu River flows and generating capacity. In 2013, an important Brazilian Panel on Climate Change report warned that global warming could drop water levels all across the Amazon basin, putting hydropower in serious jeopardy.
- As deforestation due to agribusiness and mining spreads across the basin, now driven by the development-friendly policies of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, the future for Amazon hydroelectric dams, their generating capacity and investment potential looks increasingly bleak.
Killing gods: The last hope for the world’s rarest reptile
- After decades of dams, overhunting and pollution the Yangtze giant softshell turtle is down to three known individuals.
- But conservationists say if they can just locate a male and female, survival for the world’s biggest freshwater turtle is still possible.
- The plan would be to capture the animals and keep them in a semi-wild captive state, but more funding and resources are needed to move forward.
Antonio Donato Nobre: “The forest is sick and losing its carbon-sequestration capacity”
- A researcher at the INPE Center of Land System Science, Antonio Donato Nobre, describes the state of degradation threatening the future of the Amazon rainforest in an exclusive interview with Mongabay.
- Nobre fears the forest is nearing what he describes as a “tipping point,” after which it will no longer be able to regenerate on its own, thus embarking on the path to desertification. “This is not about protecting the forest simply to please environmentalists. The living forest is essential for the survival of human civilization,” he says.
- In order to reverse the current state of destruction, Nobre proposes the development of a forest economy – capable, in his opinion, of generating nearly 20 times as much revenue as extensive cattle ranching. As an example, he cites the project Amazônia 4.0, which defends the use of technology for the sustainable exploration of biodiversity.
Brazil on the precipice: from environmental leader to despoiler (2010-2020)
- Brazil’s 21st century environmental record is most easily visualized via Amazon deforestation: poor regulation and lawlessness led to peak deforestation in 2004, with 27,772 square kilometers cleared. Better laws and enforcement, and a soy moratorium led to a dramatic decline to 4,571 square kilometers in 2012.
- Since then, first under Workers’ Party President Dilma Rousseff, then under Michel Temer, deforestation rates began to rise. The rate saw its biggest jump this year under President Jair Bolsonaro, with a loss of 9,762 square kilometers — the worst deforestation since 2008.
- From 2011-2016, the Amazon saw numerous hydroelectric project controversies, including the construction of the Belo Monte mega-dam, two huge hydroelectric projects on the Madeira River, plus multiple dams on the Teles Pires River. The Lava Jato corruption scandal and an economic downturn curbed dam building.
- Brazil’s ruralist agribusiness interests consolidated power, first under Temer, and more so under Bolsonaro, launching multiple attacks on indigenous and traditional land rights. Bolsonaro’s anti-environmental and anti-indigenous policies are a mark of his administration, a trend expected to continue in 2020.
Fighting to save an endangered ape, Indonesian activists fear for their lives
- Activists and academics have attempted to stop the construction of the Batang Toru hydropower plant in North Sumatra, which is currently being built in the sole known habitat of the Tapanuli Orangutan.
- Critics of the dam have faced defamation charges, visits from intelligence officers, abrupt termination from conservation jobs and warnings that they could lose the right to work in Indonesia. One prominent opponent of the dam died in suspicious circumstances in October.
- Activists in North Sumatra say they feel constantly under threat. Dam developer PT NSHE denies any efforts to silence or intimidate critics, saying the company is “always open to inputs and to collaborate with various stakeholders.”
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.
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.
‘Everything is dying’: Q&A with Brazilian indigenous leader Alessandra Munduruku
- Alessandra Munduruku recently spoke at the Global Climate Strike and presented the Munduruku Consultation Protocol to the European Parliament, tabling complaints about rights violations faced by indigenous peoples in Brazil.
- While in Berlin, the Brazilian indigenous leader told Mongabay about the on-the-ground impacts of agribusiness expansion and infrastructure development in the Amazon.
A Philippine tribe that defeated a dam prepares to fight its reincarnation
- The Dumagat-Remontado indigenous group has ancestral domain claims in an area where the Philippine government plans to build a dam to supply water to Metro Manila and nearby urban areas.
- The Kaliwa Dam is part of the New Centennial Water Source (NCWS), a project for which President Rodrigo Duterte has secured with a $235.9 million loan deal from China.
- The indigenous community defeated a previous iteration of this project, when a much larger dam was proposed in 2009, but the project has since been revised to call for nine smaller dams — an approach that observers say will undermine the resistance to the project.
- Five out of six community clusters voted to reject the Kaliwa Dam project, but the environment department still issued an environmental compliance certificate to the contractors; Duterte has also warned of the use of “extraordinary powers” to push the project through, raising the prospect of another show of mass resistance.
Controversial dam gets green light to flood a Philippine protected area
- The environment department has issued an environmental compliance certificate that allows the contested Kaliwa Dam project in the Sierra Madre mountain range to go ahead, part of a wider push to secure water supplies for Manila and surrounding areas.
- The certificate is one of the last sets of documents required by the developers for the project being funded by a $238.3 million loan from the Export-Import Bank of China.
- Yet its issuance comes despite a government-conducted environmental impact assessment showing that the dam’s reservoir alone will endanger endemic wildlife and plants, drive massive species migration, and pose risks to lowland agricultural and fishing communities with a history of flash flooding.
- The site of the planned dam falls within the Kaliwa watershed forest reserve, which has been designated a natural wildlife park sanctuary and game refuge, and an IUCN Category V Protected Landscape/Seascape.
Gravely injured orangutan rescued near site of controversial hydropower project
- A severely injured and malnourished Tapanuli orangutan has been rescued from a plantation near the site of a controversial hydropower project in Sumatra.
- The animal was found to have deep, infected gashes on its head and under its arm, which rescuers say were likely inflicted by humans.
- The orangutan may have been fleeing forest-clearing activity near the project site, which is located in the Batang Toru forest, the only known habitat of the critically endangered Tapanuli orangutan.
- This is not the first instance of orangutans apparently being driven out of their habitat by the project, which environmental activists and scientists say must be put on hold to protect the rarest great ape species in the world.
Giant Norway pension fund weighs Brazil divestment over Amazon deforestation
- KLP, Norway’s largest pension fund, with over US$80 billion in assets, is saying it may divest from transnational commodities traders operating in Brazil such as Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Bunge and Cargill, if they work with producers who contribute to deforestation. KLP has $50 million in shares and loans with the firms.
- KLP is also reaching out to other investors to lobby them to use their financial influence to curb Amazon deforestation via supply chains. On August 28, Nordea, the largest asset management group in the Nordic region announced a temporary quarantine on Brazilian government bonds in response to this year’s Amazon fires.
- International investment firms play a pivotal role in preserving or deforesting the Amazon. A new report found that mega-investment house BlackRock ranks among the top three shareholders in 25 of the largest public “deforestation-risk” companies, firms dealing in soy, beef, palm oil, pulp and paper, rubber and timber.
- The Amazon deforestation process is complex. But it often proceeds by the following steps: land speculators invade the rainforest, illegally cut down and sell the most valuable timber, then set fire to the rest; they then can sell the land for 100-200 times its previous worth to cattle ranchers, who may eventually sell it to soy growers.
Indonesian court cancels dam project in last stronghold of tigers, rhinos
- A court in Indonesia’s Aceh province has ordered an end to a planned hydroelectric project in Sumatra’s unique Leuser Ecosystem.
- Environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the Aceh government and the dam’s developer earlier this year over potential environmental destruction and violation of zoning laws.
- The area is the last place on Earth that’s home to wild tigers, rhinos, orangutans and elephants — all critically endangered species whose habitat would be flooded and fragmented by the dam and its roads and power lines.
- Villagers in the region were also widely opposed to the project, which they say would have dammed up the river on which they depend and forced them to relocate to make way for the reservoir.
India pushes for its largest ever hydropower project despite concerns
- India’s hydropower sector has come back into focus with the government clearing the path for the controversial, large-scale Dibang hydropower project in Arunachal Pradesh state.
- The project, estimated to cost about $4 billion, is expected to be the highest dam in India once completed and aimed at preventing flooding in downstream areas. It’s controversial for its proposed felling of trees and possible impact on local communities, ecology, environment and wildlife of the area.
- In its focus on the hydropower sector, the Indian government has also introduced a bill to parliament on dam safety, to regulate the more than 5,600 existing dams in India, some of them more than 100 years old, and the nearly 4,700 under construction.
In Madagascar, villagers oppose plans for a dam that would inundate their land
- A dam project in Madagascar’s central highlands, still in its planning stages, would submerge several villages, forcing hundreds or thousands of people out of their ancestral homes.
- Residents at risk of being displaced oppose the dam, and civil society groups argue that its potentially large size and social impact are not justified by the relatively small amount of power it would produce.
- The Italian company behind the project insists it’s not yet clear if the project is feasible and has made no definitive plans to build the dam.
Zambia halts plans to dam the Luangwa River
- WWF reports that the Zambian government has cancelled a pre-feasibility study for a dam on the Luangwa River, the Ndevu Gorge Power Project, which would have cost $1.26 billion and generated between 235 and 240 megawatts of power if completed.
- More than 200,000 people had signed a petition calling for the legal protection of the river. Critics of the dam project argued that fragmentation of the Luangwa would threaten wildlife and freshwater fish stocks, as well as the agriculture and tourism that local communities rely on.
- A study recently published in Nature found that two-thirds of the world’s 242 longest rivers are no longer free-flowing, mainly because so many of them have been fragmented by dams.
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.
Amazon infrastructure puts 68% of indigenous lands / protected areas at risk: report
- 68 percent of the indigenous lands and protected natural areas in the nine nations encompassing the Amazon region are under pressure from roads, mining, dams, oil drilling, forest fires and deforestation, according to a new report by RAISG, the Amazonian Geo-referenced Socio-Environmental Information Network.
- Of the 6,345 indigenous territories located within the nine Amazonian countries surveyed, 2,042 (32 percent) are threatened or pressured by two types of infrastructure activities, while 2,584 (41 percent) are threatened or pressured by at least one. Only 8 percent of the total are not threatened or pressured at all.
- In the case of the 692 protected natural areas in the Amazon region, 193 (28 percent) suffer three kinds of threat or pressure, and 188 (27 percent) suffer threats or pressure from two activities.
- “These are alarming numbers: 43 percent of the protected natural areas and 19 percent of the indigenous lands are under three or more types of pressure or threat,” said Júlia Jacomini, a researcher with the ISA, Instituto Socioambiental, an NGO and RAISG partner.
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.
Dam in Ethiopia has wiped out indigenous livelihoods, report finds
- A dam in southern Ethiopia built to supply electricity to cities and control the flow of water for irrigating industrial agriculture has led to the displacement and loss of livelihoods of indigenous groups, the Oakland Institute has found.
- On June 10, the policy think tank published a report of its research, demonstrating that the effects of the Gibe III dam on the Lower Omo River continue to ripple through communities, forcing them onto sedentary farms and leading to hunger, conflict and human rights abuses.
- The Oakland Institute applauds the stated desire of the new government, which came to power in April 2018, to look out for indigenous rights.
- But the report’s authors caution that continued development aimed at increasing economic productivity and attracting international investors could further marginalize indigenous communities in Ethiopia.
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.
Former Brazilian enviro ministers blast Bolsonaro environmental assaults
- A new manifesto by eight of Brazil’s past environment ministers has accused the rightist Bolsonaro administration of “a series of unprecedented actions that are destroying the capacity of the environment ministry to formulate and carry out public policies.”
- The ministers warn that Bolsonaro’s draconian environmental policies, including the weakening of environmental licensing, plus sweeping illegal deforestation amnesties, could cause great economic harm to Brazil, possibly endangering trade agreements with the European Union.
- Brazil this month threatened to overhaul rules used to select deforestation projects for the Amazon Fund, a pool of money provided to Brazil annually, mostly by Norway and Germany. Both nations deny being consulted about the rule change that could end many NGOs receiving grants from the fund.
- Environment Minister Riccardo Salles also announced a reassessment of every one of Brazil’s 334 conservation units. Some parks may be closed, including the Tamoios Ecological Station, where Bolsonaro was fined for illegal fishing in 2012 and which he’d like to turn into the “Brazilian Cancun.”
Bauxite mining and Chinese dam push Guinea’s chimpanzees to the brink
- Guinea is home to about half of the world’s critically endangered western chimpanzees.
- A bauxite mining boom is driving the chimpanzees from their habitats in Guinea’s Boké region. To compensate, two mining firms agreed in 2017 to fund the establishment of Moyen-Bafing National Park, home to an estimated 5,300 chimpanzees.
- The national park is itself threatened by a bauxite mine and a proposed hydroelectric dam — projects that could kill as many as 2,800 of the great apes.
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.
Amazon fish kill at Sinop spotlights risk from 80+ Tapajós basin dams
- Evidence shows that a 2019 fish kill in which 13 tons of dead fish were found in Brazil’s Teles Pires River was likely caused by anoxia (lack of oxygen) created by the filling of the Sinop dam’s reservoir by the Sinop HPP consortium (which includes French and Brazilian firms responsible for construction and operation).
- Scientists and environmentalists had warned of this and other ecological risks, but their calls for caution were ignored by regulators and resisted by the builder. Only 30 percent of vegetation was removed from the area of the reservoir, rather than the 100 percent required by law, which helped cause the die-off.
- The concern now is that similar incidents could occur elsewhere. There are at least 80 hydroelectric plants planned for the Juruena / Teles Pires basin alone — one of the Brazilian Amazon’s most important watersheds.
- Of immediate concern is the Castanheira dam on the Arinos River to be built by the federal Energy Research Company (EPE). Critics fear that, under the Jair Bolsonaro government, environmental licensing and construction will advance despite serious threats posed to indigenous reserves and the environment.
3 massacres in 12 days: Rural violence escalates in Brazilian Amazon
- The Amazon has seen 3 probable massacres in 12 days — likely a record for the region — as violence has exploded in areas of heavy deforestation where the building of large dams has brought a capital infusion, sent land prices soaring, and invited land speculation by land grabbers, loggers and ranchers.
- A Brazilian landless movement peasant leader and a leading dam activist are among those killed. The attacks have been concentrated in areas centered around the Belo Monte mega-dam; in the Madeira basin near the Jirau dam; and near the Tucuruí dam on the Tocantins River in Pará state.
- Investigations are ongoing, but early reports are that at least 9 people are dead, with some witnesses saying more have been killed, especially rural landless peasant workers. Before becoming president, Jair Bolsonaro expressed strong hostility against the landless peasant movement (Movimento dos Sem Terra, or MST).
- The Bolsonaro Administration has yet to condemn or comment significantly on the recent wave of killings. As of this article’s publication, the international community has taken little notice of the spike in violence.
In Bosnia-Herzegovina, grassroots opposition stalls another hydropower project
- Residents of a small Bosnian village kept watch day and night for years so that construction vehicles could not access the site of a proposed dam just upstream that would threaten their river’s health.
- Protests like it have become common here and in other Balkan nations such as Albania, Macedonia, and Serbia, where a growing trend of hydroelectric power projects aims to capitalize on the region’s having many of the last free-flowing rivers in Europe.
- Plans have been laid for nearly 3,000 new hydro dams across the Balkans, a 300% increase in the past two years.
- The people of Kruščica are celebrating a recent win: a judge revoked the dam’s construction permits in December, citing a lack of community consultation.
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.
Indigenous groups in Ecuador convene to talk resistance in the Amazon
- The meeting was the first time the three groups met in their own territory.
- The assembly was called in response to an announcement by Ecuador’s Minister of Energy and Non-renewable Resources in 2018, who said Blocks 86 and 87 in Ecuador’s eastern Amazon are for sale and “there will be no problems because the communities are in other blocks.”
- In response, the three nations, whose territories overlap with Blocks 86 and 87, are demanding the free, prior and informed consent process and a stop to all oil, mining and hydroelectric projects in the Amazon.
Leading Amazon dam rights activist, spouse and friend murdered in Brazil
- Dilma Ferreira Silva, long time regional coordinator of the Movement of People Affected by Dams (MAB) in the Tucuruí region of Pará state, was brutally murdered last Friday at her home, along with her husband, Claudionor Costa da Silva, and Hilton Lopes, a friend.
- Silva was one of 32,000 people displaced during the construction of the Tucuruí mega-dam. The internationally recognized activist has in recent years been pushing the Brazilian government to adopt legislation establishing the rights of those displaced by dams, providing them with compensation; the government has so far done little to create such laws.
- The killers of public officials, environmentalists, landless movement and indigenous activists in the Amazon are rarely found or brought to justice. However, in this case, Civil Police have arrested a large landowner, farmer and businessman, Fernando Ferreira Rosa Filho, known as Fernando Shalom.
- While the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and deputies in the Brazilian Congress, have condemned the killing of dam activist Silva, her husband and friend, the Bolsonaro administration has failed to issue a statement of any kind.
Malaysian state chief: Highway construction must not destroy forest
- The chief minister of Sabah, one of two Malaysian states on the island of Borneo, said that the Pan Borneo Highway project should expand existing roads where possible to minimize environmental impact.
- A coalition of local NGOs and scientific organizations applauded the announcement, saying that it could usher in a new era of collaboration between the government and civil society to look out for Sabah’s people and forests.
- These groups have raised concerns about the impacts on wildlife and communities of the proposed path of the highway, which will cover some 5,300 kilometers (3,300 miles) in the states of Sabah and Sarawak.
Madeira River dams may spell doom for Amazon’s marathon catfish: Studies
- Independent monitoring of a giant Amazon catfish population in the Madeira River, a major tributary of the Amazon, confirms that two hydroelectric dams have virtually blocked the species’ homing migration upstream — the longest known freshwater fish migration in the world.
- Research completed in 2018 indicates a serious decline in catches of the gilded catfish (Brachyplatystoma rousseauxii) and other key commercial species on the Madeira, both upstream and downstream of the two dams.
- New monitoring techniques show that the disruption of the migration route raises the risk of extinction for this species, for which researchers have recommended the conservation status be elevated from vulnerable to critically endangered.
- If the gilded catfish and other migratory species are to survive, mechanisms to assist their migration past the dams must be improved, researchers say.
Tear down the dams: New coalition strives to enshrine rights of orcas
- A new coalition of scientists, indigenous peoples, community groups and lawyers is pushing for legal recognition of the rights of an endangered orca population living in the Salish Sea.
- The population, known as the Southern Resident Killer Whales, numbers just 75 individuals, down from 98 in 1995.
- The orcas are imperiled by noise and chemical pollution, the impending construction of Canada’s Trans-Mountain pipeline, and, most of all, severe salmon shortages caused by the damming of the rivers that feed into the sea.
New maps show where humans are pushing species closer to extinction
- A new study maps out how disruptive human changes to the environment affect the individual ranges of more than 5,400 mammal, bird and amphibian species around the world.
- Almost a quarter of the species are threatened by human impacts in more than 90 percent of their range, and at least one human impact occurred in an average of 38 percent of the range of a given species.
- The study also identified “cool” spots, where concentrations of species aren’t negatively impacted by humans.
- The researchers say these “refugia” are good targets for conservation efforts.
Activists fighting to save orangutan habitat from dam unfazed by legal setback
- An Indonesian court has ruled that construction of a hydroelectric dam in North Sumatra can proceed despite concerns it will harm the critically endangered Tapanuli orangutan.
- Conservationists plan to appeal, citing “irregularities” in the decision and saying important issues raised during the hearing were not taken into account.
- The loss of even one or two orangutans per year due to impacts from the hydroelectric project could lead to eventual extinction, experts say.
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.
Protests flare as pressure mounts on dam project in orangutan habitat
- Activists in Jakarta and cities around the world staged protests outside Bank of China branches and Chinese diplomatic missions on March 1.
- They called on state-owned BOC to end its funding for a hydroelectric project in Sumatra that threatens the only known habitat of the Tapanuli orangutan, the world’s rarest great ape.
- A lawsuit is pending in an Indonesian court, and a verdict due on March 4 could see the developer’s environmental permit rescinded, essentially halting the project.
- The protests come amid a revelation, first reported by Mongabay, that the signature of a scientist involved in the environmental impact analysis was forged to obtain the permit.
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.
New Species of orangutan threatened from moment of its discovery
- In a November 2017 article, an international team of scientists described a new species of great ape: the Tapanuli orangutan.
- The announcement was based on years of researched that demonstrated the species exhibited genetic, physical and behavioral differences that distinguished it from Sumatran and Bornean orangutans.
- Even as conservationists celebrated the description of a new species, they raised an alarm about the dangers facing the ape — notably, a hydropower dam planned for its sole remaining habitat.
- This is the second in a two-part series about the discovery of the Tapanuli orangutan.
Bolsonaro government takes aim at Vatican over Amazon meeting
- The Catholic Church has scheduled a Synod for October, a meeting at which bishops and priests (and one nun) from the nine Latin American Amazon countries will discuss environmental, indigenous and climate change issues.
- Members of the new rightist Brazilian government of Jair Bolsonaro are eyeing the event with suspicion, seeing it as an attack on national sovereignty by a progressive church.
- To show its opposition to the Amazon Synod, the Brazilian government plans to sponsor a rival symposium in Rome, just a month before the Pope’s meeting, to present examples of “Brazil’s concern and care for the Amazon.”
- At issue are two opposing viewpoints: the Catholic Church under Pope Francis sees itself and all nations as stewards of the Earth and of less privileged indigenous and traditional people. Bolsonaro, however, and many of his ruralist and evangelical allies see the Amazon as a resource to be used and developed freely by humans.
What does it take to discover a new great ape species?
- In a paper published November 2017, an international team of scientists described a new species of orangutan.
- The Tapanuli orangutan, the eighth known great ape, is distinct from its Sumatran and Bornean cousins in several key ways.
- The species is also highly threatened, with plans to develop a hydroelectric dam in its only known habitat raising alarm among conservationists.
- This is the first in a two-part series about the discovery of the Tapanuli orangutan. Part Two will be published Feb. 20.
Latam Eco Review: Twilight for Darwin’s foxes, nightlife for jaguarundis
Jaguarundis caught on camera in Peru, hydropower choking Colombia’s Cauca River, and Darwin’s foxes on the brink of extinction were among the recent top stories from our Spanish-language service, Mongabay Latam. Caught on camera: Unexpected nightlife of jaguarundi in Peru They were following spectacled bears in northern Peru, but at night camera traps caught species […]
Dam déjà vu: 2 Brazil mining waste disasters in 3 years raise alarms
- Even as Brazil’s newly seated Bolsonaro administration calls for the gutting of environmental licensing rules and for other environmental deregulation, a January collapse of a Vale Mining tailings storage dam in Brumadinho, killing more than 150 people with more than 180 missing and feared dead, has outraged Brazilians.
- The disaster is the second such accident in barely three years. In November 2015, another Vale-affiliated dam collapsed, also in Minas Gerais state, killing 19 and polluting the Doce River for 500 miles all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. The two accidents now vie for designation as Brazil’s worst environmental disaster.
- Mongabay’s investigation of the 2015 accident response and the national and state inspection system, while not all encompassing, shows a high degree of long-term failure by government, by mining companies, and inspection consultants to adequately assess tailings dam risk, and to repair structurally deficient dams.
- Three years after the Fundão dam failure, government and mining companies have received poor marks from critics for victim compensation and fixes for socio-environmental harm. On February 7th, Brazil said it aims to ban upstream tailings dams (UTDs), the type that failed both times. No details were released as to how Brazil’s 88 existing UTDs would be dismantled.
Good news from Mexico monarch reserve despite looming deforestation, mine threat
- On today’s episode, we talk with Mongabay contributor Martha Pskowski, who recently traveled to central Mexico to report on threats to monarch butterflies in their overwintering grounds.
- Tourists typically arrive in droves to see the butterflies at the reserves set up in their overwintering grounds, and right now is a particularly good time to see the butterflies, as Mexico’s national commissioner for protected natural areas has announced that, after years of declines, the number of monarchs spending their winter in Mexico is up 144 percent from last year.
- As Pskowski found on her recent reporting trip to two different monarch butterfly reserves in the Mexican states of Michoacán and the State of Mexico, the annual arrival of the monarchs is a major component of the local economy, but the butterflies still face a variety of threats to their survival once they reach their overwintering grounds.
New appointments, new policies don’t bode well for Brazilian Amazon
- Jair Bolsonaro took office on 1 January. Since then, he has made appointments to his government, and there have been statements by people in his administration, that are causing grave concern among environmentalists.
- New Environment Minister Ricardo Salles has come out strongly for an end to the demarcation of indigenous lands, and in support of entrepreneurs and companies being allowed to self-regulate the environmental licensing process for major infrastructure and development projects.
- Salles also wants to hire a satellite firm to monitor Brazil’s forest fires, drought and deforestation. Brazil’s National Space Research Institute (INPE), a governmental agency, released a response explaining that it is already doing this work. While Salles plan isn’t clear, it could be a means of privatizing deforestation monitoring.
- Franklimberg Ribeiro de Freitas has been chosen to head Funai, Brazil’s indigenous affairs agency. However, some fear a major conflict of interest. Freitas was most recently a consulting advisor for indigenous, community, and environmental affairs with the Belo Sun mining company, where he sided against indigenous land rights.
Dam holding mining waste collapses in Brazil
- The collapse of a dam in the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil on Jan. 25 left at least 58 people dead and hundreds missing.
- The dam held the waste by-product of iron ore mining from a nearby mine run by a company called Vale.
- Vale was involved in another dam collapse in 2015 — called Brazil’s worst environmental disaster — that resulted in criminal charges for several of the company’s leaders and nearly $100 million in fines.
- Critics of mining practices say that the recent failure of the dam shows that authorities should step up the enforcement of regulations in Brazil.
Bolsonaro government reveals plan to develop the ‘Unproductive Amazon’
- Bolsonaro administration Chief of Strategic Affairs Maynard Santa Rosa last week announced new Brazilian mega-infrastructure projects that include a dam on the Trombetas River, a bridge over the Amazon River, and an extension of the BR-163 highway from the Amazon River through 300 miles of rainforest to the Surinam border.
- Santa Rosa, a retired general, said that these Amazon biome infrastructure projects had as their purpose the integration of what he called an “unproductive, desertlike” region into “the national productive system.”
- The Trombetas region contains 4 indigenous reserves, 8 quilombo communities and 5 conservation units.
- In his radio announcement the official provided few details on the projects, saying nothing about costs, where the money to build would come from, what the socio-environmental impacts might be, or the timeline for the construction.
Of concrete and corruption: Resistance kills Andes Amazon dams
- In 2010, the presidents of Peru and Brazil made a deal to build 22 major Andes Amazon dams on the Marañón River – the Amazon River’s mainstem. The energy generated by those dams would go to vastly expand Peru’s Conga gold and copper mine, making it one of the biggest in the world.
- The Conga mine expansion would have dumped 85,000 tons of toxic, heavy metal-laden tailings into the Ucayali River watershed daily. The Marañón dams would have blocked vital nutrient and sediment flow, likely doing irreparable harm to Amazon River and Amazon basin ecology.
- Odebrecht, a Brazilian mega-construction firm, was picked to spearhead building. The projects were strongly opposed by the rural people they’d impact, and by an international alliance of environmental NGOs and river adventure tourists who see the Marañón as Latin America’s Grand Canyon.
- Nine years later, the Peruvian and Brazilian presidents and Odebrecht executives involved in the deal are in jail or charged with corruption. All but two of the dam projects have been abandoned. The result came about largely due to the astonishingly successful resistance of local rural people.
Bolsonaro acts; Brazil’s socio-environmental groups resist
- The Bolsonaro administration is barely two weeks old, but the new president and his appointees continue to make incendiary statements and press forward with provisional measures and policies that could seriously infringe indigenous, quilombola and agrarian reform land rights, and environmental protections.
- Protest has been loud against the government’s plan to shift the responsibility for indigenous land demarcation away from FUNAI, the indigenous affairs agency, to the Agriculture Ministry, which is dominated by agribusiness and far right ruralists who have long desired indigenous lands. Another proposal may “rent” indigenous lands to ruralists.
- Amazon land thieves also have been emboldened since the election, with the invasion of the Arara Indigenous Reserve in southeast Pará state on 30 December, two days before Bolsonaro took office. On 11 January, land thieves invaded the Uru-eu-wau-wau reserve in Rondônia state. There has been no federal law enforcement response to either conflict.
- On 5 January armed land grabbers attacked a landless rural workers agrarian reform encampment occupied by 200 families in Colniza in Mato Grosso state. One landless peasant was killed and nine seriously wounded. The landless peasants were awaiting a court ruling as to whether a nearby tract would be deeded to the group.
The biggest rainforest news stories in 2018
- This is our annual rainforests year in review post.
- Overall, 2018 was not a good year for the planet’s tropical rainforests.
- Rainforest conservation suffered many setbacks, especially in Brazil, the Congo Basin, and Madagascar.
- Colombia was one of the few bright spots for rainforests in 2018.
Devastating Laos dam collapse leads to deforestation of protected forests
- The collapse of a dam in southern Laos released five billion cubic meters of water, killing dozens, devastating communities, and forcing thousands to flee.
- The collapse also flooded areas of protected forest. In early September, the Global Land Analysis and Discovery Lab at the University of Maryland began detecting tree cover loss along a 22-mile length of the river. By December 7, more than 7,500 deforestation alerts had been recorded.
- An investigation by Mongabay revealed collateral damage is also taking place as residents harvest wood from both downed trees and living forests in an effort to make ends meet.
- One of the companies involved with the dam reportedly blamed heavy rain and flooding for the collapse, but many have questioned their liability and believe the companies should be providing compensation.
Brazil: Bolsonaro supporter works to imprison Dorothy Stang’s successor
- Brazilian President-elect Jair Bolsonaro is reportedly considering logger and politician Silvério Fernandes to head the Xingu, Pará, branch of the Brazilian Institute for Settlement and Land Reform (INCRA). Fernandes and other ruralists have accused Father José Amaro Lopes de Souza of serious land reform-related crimes.
- Father Amaro is the successor of U.S. missionary Dorothy Stang, murdered in 2005. Amaro says he committed no crime, though admits to supporting landless worker settlements in Anapu, Pará state. Father Amaro was charged and imprisoned earlier this year and held in proximity to the man convicted of organizing Stang’s murder.
- Land conflicts in Anapu began in the 1970s when Brazil’s military government invited outsiders to occupy land there, with the provision that they could keep it when they produced crops or livestock. Few succeeded, and the land reverted to the state. Later, agrarian reform communities were established which Stang supported.
- She was killed in 2005. Land conflicts simmered after that, with violence erupting after 2015 when the nearby Belo Monte dam was finished and unemployed workers, allegedly prompted by loggers, poured into Anapu to claim land. If Fernandes gets the INCRA title, he’ll hold sway over workers’ settlement policy in the Xingu region.
Bolsonaro shapes administration: Amazon, indigenous and landless at risk
- President-elect Jair Bolsonaro has chosen Ricardo Salles as Brazil’s environment minister. The former São Paulo state government environment secretary is under investigation for allegedly redrawing maps allowing protected lands to be developed for mining and factories. His statements are heavily pro-agribusiness and sometimes espouse violence.
- The selection of ruralist Tereza Cristina as agriculture minister, and Ernesto Araújo as foreign minister, also almost certainly signals difficult days ahead for Brazil’s environment. Cristina has pushed hard for fast track approval of toxic pesticides. Araújo calls climate change a “Marxist” conspiracy.
- Analysts say that, by choosing ministry appointees who hold extreme views on the environment, Bolsonaro is making Brazil vulnerable to economic reprisals from the international community – especially from developed nations and companies responding to voters and consumers who oppose harm to the Amazon and indigenous groups.
- Former army officer Bolsonaro has chosen six retired generals to head ministries; other military men join him as VP and chief of staff. Activists fear these appointments will have a chilling effect on Brazilian democracy, leading to repression. Deforestation and violence against activists since the campaign, including assassinations, continue rising in Brazil.
‘Amazon Besieged’: Q&A with Mongabay contributor Sue Branford about new book
- From 2016 to 2017, Mongabay contributors Sue Branford and Maurício Torres traveled to the Tapajós River Basin, in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, to report on the controversial plan to turn the region into a major commodities export corridor.
- Branford and Torres wrote a 15-part investigative series (published in partnership with The Intercept Brazil) based on what they’d found during their travels for Mongabay in the Tapajós Basin, one of the most biodiverse and culturally rich places on Earth. Now, the reporters have turned those pieces into a book, Amazon Besieged, which was published by Practical Action Publishing this month.
- Mongabay spoke with Sue Branford about what new perspectives she gained on the issues covered in the book while compiling her and Torres’ on-the-ground reporting for publication, what she hopes the average reader takes away from Amazon Besieged, and what she thinks the prospects are for the Amazon under the incoming Bolsonaro Administration.
Dam drove ‘collapse’ of rainforest bird populations in Thailand
- A 165-square-kilometer (64-square-mile) reservoir in the lowland rainforest of Thailand has led to the “collapse” of the region’s bird populations, according to recent research.
- Built in 1986, the Ratchaprapha dam altered the habitat and led to deforestation, resulting in the decline of many species and the local extinction of perhaps five.
- The authors of the study say their findings highlight concerns about whether hydroelectric dams “are worth the environmental costs.”
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.
Belo Monte dam Xingu River Management Plan violates human rights: finding
- Construction on the Belo Monte mega-dam, on the Xingu River in Pará state in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, began in 2011. Since then, the giant infrastructure project has met with a near constant flood of contentious protests from indigenous and traditional communities, and from the international environmental community.
- Norte Energia, the consortium that built and operates the troubled project, has been fined or seen its operating license withdrawn by the Brazilian government for a variety of socio-environmental violations, including fish kills and the failure to provide compensation promised at the start of the project to local people and the nearby city of Altamira.
- Local communities, with legal assistance from international civil society organizations, filed a motion to the UN Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) asking for the Belo Monte dam project to be officially labeled a Violation of Human Rights. In November, the Commission’s preliminary conclusions found repeated violations.
- Indigenous communities “suffer from frequent incidents of violence and lack of attention from public services, in addition to increased difficulties and obstacles surrounding claims to their lands,” said Commissioner Antonia Urrejola Noguera, the IACHR Rapporteur for Brazil. Norte Energia has denied the charges.
7 convicted of killing Honduran indigenous activist Berta Cáceres
- A Honduran court has convicted seven men of the murder of indigenous rights activist Berta Cáceres in 2016.
- Until her death on March 2, 2016, Cáceres had been leading a fierce campaign against the Agua Zarca dam, a project of the Honduran company DESA, in western Honduras. The hydropower project threatened to displace thousands of people from the Lenca indigenous community.
- Nine people have been arrested in connection with Cáceres’s murder to date. Seven men were found guilty in the latest verdict and one defendant was acquitted.
- David Castillo Mejía, the executive president of DESA who was charged with being the mastermind of the murder in March this year, will face a separate trial.
Santo Antônio mega-dam on Brazil’s Madeira River disrupts local lives
- The Santo Antônio mega-dam built in the Amazon has heavily impacted the traditional communities displaced from their homes on the Madeira River. Many local residents were relocated from the riverside to cities, and seriously uprooted from their lifestyles, livelihoods and cultures.
- These local communities say that neither the Santo Antônio Energia Consortium, which built the dam, nor the government have been responsive to their allegations of polluted water, lost fisheries, lack of jobs and difficult urban living conditions.
- Analysts agree that the close relationship between the Brazilian government and large dam building consortiums, energy firms, mining companies and agribusiness – all profiting heavily from new dams – has resulted in local concerns being poorly addressed or ignored in the past.
- Experts also say that the Amazon dam building surge of the past few decades is likely to continue as Brazilian funding sources like the BNDES development bank dry up, but China steps in to fund mega-dams, and smaller hydro projects. Socio-environmental harm could easily escalate.
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.
New dam set to spoil Sumatran wonderland (commentary)
- Amid the tropical rainforest in the Hadabuan Hills Ecosystem, where Siamang and Agile gibbons cry out and where Rhinoceros hornbills and Black hornbills growl and cackle above the forest canopy, survey work by a Korean hydroelectric company has just wrapped up, and construction is slated to begin in 2020 on a dam called Siborpa Hydroelectric Power Plant.
- The Hadabuan Hills isn’t a national park or a wildlife sanctuary; about half of it is considered a hutan desa, or village forest. It is essentially a cluster of steep mountains that were too difficult to cultivate quickly and easily, and were thus spared wholesale conversion to oil palm plantations due to the challenging topography.
- So far we have confirmed the presence of tigers, clouded leopards, marbled cats, golden cats, Malayan tapirs, sun bears, leaf monkeys, the fast-disappearing Sumatran Laughingthrush, and a plethora of other wildlife. If this place isn’t a national treasure, we don’t know what is. To see it badly scarred by a hydroelectric dam of questionable use and value would be deeply disturbing.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Bolsonaro pledges government shakeup, deregulation, Amazon development
- Events are unfolding rapidly in Brazil, as president elect Jair Bolsonaro selects members of his administration and continues to propose what many analysts see as sweeping and draconian changes to the Brazilian government and environmental regulations.
- Bolsonaro, while stepping back from plans for a merger of the Environment Ministry with the Agriculture Ministry, still plans major government reorganization. Paulo Guedes, his chief economic advisor, for example, could lead a super ministry merging duties of the Finance, Planning, Industry and Foreign Trade ministries.
- During the presidential campaign, Amazon deforestation rates rose by nearly 50 percent, possibly as Bolsonaro supporters and land grabbers anticipate government retreat from environmental protections. Analysts worry Bolsonaro will criminalize social movements and end the demarcation of indigenous reserves assured by the 1988 Constitution.
- Bolsonaro also chose Tereza Cristina as Agriculture Minister. She is known for her intense support of pesticide deregulation, and for backing a bill to fast track socio-environmental licensing of large infrastructure projects such as dams, railways, roads, industrial waterways, and mines – a position Bolsonaro also supports.
Cerrado farm community fights for life against dam and eucalyptus growers
- A wealth of great rivers caused Brazil in recent years to pursue a frenzy of mega-dam construction in the Amazon and Cerrado, work that enthusiasts claimed would benefit Brazilians with cheap energy. Critics say otherwise, however, noting much of the power produced goes to large mining company operations.
- Analysts also point to completed projects, such as the Belo Monte, Teles Pires, Santo Antonio, Jirau and other dams, that have resulted in significant environmental harm, the displacement of rural indigenous and traditional populations, and to generating massive corruption.
- A case in point can be found in the small town of Formosa in Tocantins state. The building of the Estreito mega-dam, completed in 2008, flooded fields, pastures and homes. The most impacted half of the community was relocated by the consortium of companies that constructed the dam.
- The rest remained and were denied the social and economic benefits they’d been promised by either the government or the dam building consortium, which includes two mining giants, Alcoa and Vale, and Suez Energy and Camargo Corrêa Energia. Many Brazilian mega-dams were planned to offer energy to large mines.
Colombia: Dying of thirst, Wayuu blame mine, dam, drought for water woes
- The struggle for access to safe and sufficient water for drinking and irrigation defines life for the indigenous Wayuu of La Guajira, Colombia’s northernmost department.
- Activists have described the Wayuu as being in the throes of a humanitarian crisis, with Wayuu children suffering high rates of malnutrition and death as a result of water and food scarcity.
- The Wayuu blame their thirst mainly on the Cerrejón coal mine, which they say drains water from the local river and groundwater and pollutes what’s left. A dam built by the government to provide water in times of drought has only made matters worse, they say.
- However, Cerrejón disputes the notion that it is seriously affecting the tribe, while the government defends decisions that have compromised the Wayuu’s water access.
Amazon and climate science threatened if Bolsonaro elected Brazil’s president (commentary)
- Fake news and pseudo-science have been used as propaganda by supporters of the far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro during his presidential election bid, according to a group of 17 Latin American scientists.
- The lack of defined environmental positions within the candidate’s political platform is of great concern to the scientific community.
- The pledge to fuse the agricultural and environmental ministries, expand agricultural and mining activities especially in the Amazon, and the promise made in the media to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, could make a Bolsonaro presidency dangerous not only for Brazil but for the world.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay. A full list of authors is presented at the end of the commentary.
Study warns of dire ecological, social fallout from Sumatran dam
- A new study warns that the environmental impact of a planned hydroelectric plant in Sumatra’s unique Leuser Ecosystem will be much greater than initially thought.
- The area is the last place on Earth that’s home to wild tigers, rhinos, orangutans and elephants — all critically endangered species whose habitat would be flooded and fragmented by the dam and its roads and power lines, activists say.
- They also warn of the dam exacerbating disaster risks to local communities, in a region already prone to flooding, landslides and earthquakes.
- Activists are mulling a lawsuit to void the project permit, but the developer says it has done everything by the book and that the new study is based on an outdated environmental impact analysis.
Grainrail: ‘2nd revolution in Brazilian agribusiness’ and Amazon threat
- The BR-163 highway is being overwhelmed with truck traffic moving soy from the interior state of Mato Grosso to ports on the Tapajós River, where the cargo is moved to barges taking it down the Amazon for export to the EU and China. Soy farmers and transnational commodities companies say the answer is a new Amazon railway.
- Ferrogrão (Grainrail) would stretch for 934 kilometers (580 miles), running parallel to the BR-163, from northern Mato Grosso to the port of Miritituba on the Tapajós River. Proponents argue the new rail line would cut freight costs, while reducing shipment times and backlogs, and even decrease greenhouse gas emissions due to transport.
- Conservationists and indigenous groups strongly oppose the plan, saying that the railroad threatens the Amazon rainforest and the Cerrado, would likely have harmful impacts on three indigenous groups, and would open 14 protected areas to illegal intruders, including loggers and ranchers.
- Grainrail has yet to be green lighted, maybe due to Brazil’s political and economic instability. Investors may be waiting to see how the election of Jair Bolsonaro might impact the nation – possibly opening the way for much longed-for Amazon industrial waterways. This story is the first in an exclusive Mongabay series about Grainrail.
Jair Bolsonaro: looming threat to the Amazon and global climate?
- Jair Bolsonaro is poised to win the Brazilian presidential runoff on 28 October – currently polling with 58 percent of the vote. He holds strong policy positions in opposition to the environment, indigenous rights and traditional land claims.
- Bolsonaro has pledged to open the Amazon to economic exploitation, greatly expand energy production, abolish Brazil’s environmental ministry, relax environmental licensing and regulation, open indigenous reserves to mining, and back out of the Paris climate accord.
- Moreover, Bolsonaro’s once tiny PSL Party elected 52 new federal deputies and four senators in the 7 October election. It is very likely that these ultra-right PSL representatives will caucus with the right-wing bancada ruralista agribusiness and mining bloc in Congress, giving them a majority.
- As a result, analysts say that if Bolsonaro is elected president, he will probably have the full support of Congress in fulfilling his agenda, with only the Supreme Court likely standing in the way of significant Amazon deforestation and other environmental harm.
Fate of the Amazon is on the ballot in Brazil’s presidential election (commentary)
- In the late 20th and early 21st century, Brazil set policies that made it a world leader in reducing deforestation, helping safeguard the Amazon.
- However, the gains made over those years are now at risk due to the proposed environmental policies of far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro, who analysts say is highly likely to become Brazil’s president in a runoff election on 28 October.
- Bolsonaro has pledged to shut down Brazil’s environmental ministry, relax environmental law enforcement and licensing, open indigenous reserves to mining, ban international environmental NGOs such as Greenpeace and WWF from the country, and back out of the Paris climate accord.
- A study by this commentary’s authors estimates that Brazilian deforestation and carbon emissions under Bolsonaro’s policies would cause unprecedented Amazon forest loss, and contribute to destabilizing the global climate. This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.
Amazonia and the setbacks of Brazil’s political moment (commentary)
- In the October 7 Brazilian election, far right candidate Jair Bolsonaro won 46 percent of the vote, not enough to earn the presidency, but triggering a runoff election October 28 with Fernando Haddad who came in second with 29 percent. Analysts say that, barring surprises, Bolsonaro could be Brazil’s next leader.
- Bolsonaro was elected based on several issues, including reaction to government corruption and his stance on crime. However, says analyst Philip Fearnside, Jair’s most lasting impacts will likely be on the environment, especially the Amazon, indigenous and traditional peoples, and destabilization of the global climate.
- The candidate has promised to abolish Brazil’s environmental ministry, expel NGOs such as Greenpeace and WWF from the country, slash science and technology budgets, “sell” indigenous lands, and “relax” licensing for major infrastructure projects such as dams, industrial waterways, roads and railways.
- But his most impactful act could be a pledge to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement, ending Brazil’s global commitment to reduce deforestation, triggering massive Amazon forest loss, and possibly runaway climate change. This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Brazilian elections and the environment: where top candidates stand
- The Brazilian elections are just weeks away, scheduled for 7 October. The five leading candidates are Jair Bolsonaro, Marina Silva, Ciro Gomes, Geraldo Alckmin, and Fernando Haddad, though none appears to have sufficient voter backing to win on election-day. A runoff with the top two will occur on 28 October.
- This story offers an overview of the environmental stance of the top five. Jair Bolsonaro, leader in the polls, would pull Brazil out of the Paris Climate Agreement, abolish the Ministry of the Environment, and open the Amazon and indigenous lands for economic exploitation.
- Marina Silva, a former environmental minister, established policies that reduced Amazon deforestation. She would keep Brazil in the Paris Agreement and use it as a means of shifting the nation’s agribusiness sector to be more sustainable, competitive and equitable. Ciro Gomes supports hydroelectric dams and the Paris Agreement.
- Geraldo Alckmin supports agribusiness over environmental. Little is known of Fernando Haddad’s environmental positions, though he’s a strong proponent of bicycling to reduce car use. As important for the environment: the bancada ruralista agribusiness lobby looks poised to grow stronger in congress in the coming election.
Brazilian legislators break law, attack Amazon, trade freely with world: report
- A new Amazon Watch report offers evidence showing that six prominent Brazilian politicians are charged with, and/or guilty of, a variety of environmental, social, and economic crimes. All six are active in the bancada ruralista agribusiness lobby of congress, and all but one are up for election in October.
- According to the report, the six have been strident advocates of the ruralist policies that are slashing environmental protections, exacerbating Amazon deforestation, and rolling back indigenous land rights.
- Yet their agricultural commodities, and those of their political and business allies, are being sold to the U.S. and EU, with importers including soft drinks manufacturers Coca Cola (U.S) and Schweppes (Switzerland), the poultry producer Wiesenhof (Germany) and others.
- The report says that transnational companies and consumers are thus unwittingly empowering the ruralists’ drastic legislative environmental attacks, and it calls for importing countries and companies to take responsibility for their actions. Mongabay profiles two legislators featured in the report: Adilton Sachetti and Nelson Marquezelli.
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?
Chinese / Western financing of roads, dams led to major Andes Amazon deforestation
- International development finance institutions (DFIs) invested heavily in large-scale infrastructure projects that triggered significant deforestation in the Andes Amazon especially within the nations of Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia between 2000 and 2015, according to recent research published by Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center.
- Using satellite data, the study analyzed 84 large infrastructure projects and determined that the area around them experienced tree cover loss at a rate of over four times the average seen in comparable areas without such projects in those countries. That’s a forest carbon-sink loss equivalent to the combined annual CO2 emissions of Colombia, Chile and Ecuador.
- Infrastructure now accounts for 60 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet DFIs want to increase future lending from billions to trillions to meet global demand. This could imperil national Paris Climate Agreement goals (which in countries like Brazil are linked to preventing deforestation), and also could add to potentially catastrophic global carbon emission levels.
- The study isn’t merely academic: More than $70 billion in infrastructure projects, supported by development banks and the private sector, are planned for the Amazon basin between now and 2020. The researchers hope lessons learned from past infrastructure projects and highlighted in their study will improve future project oversight to help curb deforestation.
India’s dancing deer and their unique floating home are under threat
- The critical floating habitats of the rare sangai, or dancing deer, in Loktak Lake in Manipur, India, are losing out to mushrooming agricultural practices and human settlements, a new study has found.
- The loss of floating islands from the southern and northern part of Loktak is a “major concern,” the study noted, one that could lead to the “destruction of the only floating national park in the world.”
- Much of the changes in the unique floating meadows of Loktak Lake can be attributed to the construction of the Ithai barrage on the Manipur River in 1979 for a hydroelectric project, researchers say.
Latam Eco Review: Witchcraft and wildlife trafficking in Peru
Among the most read stories at our Spanish-language service, Mongabay-Latam, this past week were articles about a hydropower project in one of Bolivia’s most diverse protected areas; Colombian Air Force drones that revealed alarming deforestation in Tinigua Park; and wildlife trafficking and witchcraft in Peru. Bolivia’s Ivirizu hydroelectric project threatens the biodiversity of Carrasco National […]
Peru: Marañón dry forests protected as a regional conservation area
- Peru has formalized the creation of the Regional Conservation Area of Seasonally Dry Tropical Forests of the Marañón through a Supreme Decree.
- The new regional conservation area will ensure the conservation of a representative sample of this ecosystem, which is home to 143 plant species, 22 bird species and 14 reptile species that live nowhere else in the world.
- A second Supreme Decree, passed on the same day, has formalized the creation of the Regional Conservation Area of the Vista Alegre Omia. These conservation areas are the first of their kind in the Amazonas region.
‘Single-minded determination’: China’s global infrastructure spree rings alarm bells
- Governments across Southeast Asia have embraced billions of dollars in construction projects backed by China as they rely on infrastructure-building to drive their economic growth.
- But there are worries that this building spree, under China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), makes no concessions for environmental protections, and even deliberately targets host countries with a weak regulatory climate.
- Beijing has also been accused of going on a debt-driven grab for natural resources and geopolitical clout, through the terms under which it lends money to other governments for the infrastructure projects.
- In parallel, China is also building up its green finance system, potentially as a means to channel more funding into its Belt and Road Initiative.
Mangroves and their deforestation may emit more methane than we thought
- A recently published study finds mangroves release more methane than previously estimated.
- Methane packs much more of a global warming punch than carbon dioxide, and the study indicates this methane could be offsetting around 20 percent of a mangrove’s soil carbon storage rate.
- Deforestation of mangroves releases much of the carbon stored by mangroves, including methane.
Scientists urge Indonesian president to nix dam in orangutan habitat
- Twenty-five of the world’s top environmental scientists have sent a letter to Indonesia’s president, seeking a halt to a planned hydroelectric dam in the only known habitat of the Tapanuli orangutan, the rarest species of great ape on Earth.
- The scientists also slammed the Chinese government for funding the project as a part of its ambitious Belt and Road Initiative, saying it has disregarded the environmental consequences of building and operating the dam.
- The developers of the project have dismissed the criticism, saying they will enforce strong environmental safeguards to protect the critically endangered Tapanuli orangutan.
Brazil’s political storm driving Amazon deforestation higher
- Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon was dramatically reduced between 2005 and 2015, surged in 2016, then fell in 2017. Preliminary figures from IMAZON suggest the trend has now reversed, with deforestation up 22 percent between August 2017 and May 2018, compared to the same period the prior year. But, so far, official confirmation from INPE of this surge is lacking.
- Experts say the source of the uptick lies with land-grabbers emboldened by the bancada ruralista, the agribusiness lobby, which has won many recent legislative and administrative victories, drastically cutting environmental and indigenous agency budgets, and pushing bills to shrink conservation units and erode indigenous land rights.
- A recent Forest Code Supreme Court ruling may have further encouraged wealthy land-grabbers, when it granted billions in amnesty, forgiving fines against many guilty of illegal deforestation. Today, Pará’s Triunfo Xingu Area of Environmental Protection and the Indigenous Territory of Apyterewa are especially threatened by land-grabbing.
- So is Pará’s Jamanxim National Forest; land thieves there hope congress will pass a bill to dismember the preserve, along with other Brazilian conservation units. Environmentalists worry that the election of right-wing populist Jair Bolsonaro as president, dubbed “Brazil’s Trump,” in October could send deforestation rates soaring.
‘Screen, not just green’ infrastructure projects to help economies and the environment
- Bill Laurance, a tropical ecologist at Australia’s James Cook University, argues that scientists should work to slow the pace of infrastructure development around the world.
- ‘Delaying’ the process of development will allow time for the merits — and the potential dangers to the environment, communities and economies — to be debated publicly.
- While many of these projects are viewed as wholly positive because they’re intended to connect markets and create jobs, a lot of them ‘should not happen,’ Laurance said.
Scientists find surprising genetic differences between Brazil’s mangroves
- Mangrove forests occupy tropical costal areas and provide important habitat for wildlife, as well as ecosystem services for human communities. They’re also carbon storage powerhouses, pound-for-pound capable of sequestering four times more carbon than a rainforest.
- Researchers analyzed the genes of mangrove forests along the coast of Brazil. They found that trees in different forests show “dramatic” differences from one another, even when they belong to the same species.
- They think these differences arose because an ocean current separates mangroves in northern and southern Brazil, making it so they can’t exchange genes.
- The researchers suspect the genetic distinctiveness of mangrove populations extends beyond Brazil. They say their results highlight the importance of enacting conservation plans that give a higher priority to the preservation of genetic diversity – an endeavor they say is becoming more and more critical for mangroves as they continue to disappear and climate change ramps up.
US/China trade war could boost Brazil soy export, Amazon deforestation
- President Donald Trump is pressing hard for a trade war with China. So far, he has imposed $50 billion in tariffs on the Chinese, and threatened another $200 billion; the Chinese are retaliating. An all-out U.S./China trade war could have serious unforeseen repercussions on the Brazilian Amazon, including increased deforestation, intensified pressures on indigenous groups, and escalated climate change.
- The concern is that China will shift its commodities purchases, including beef and soy, away from the U.S. to Brazil. The Amazon and Cerrado biomes are already major exporters of both commodities, and are creating a boom in infrastructure construction to bring those products to market. Even without a trade war, experts expect Brazil to edge out the U.S. this year as the world´s largest soy producer.
- The U.S. tariffs may already be prompting a shift in trade. Trump first threatened China with tariffs in January. By April, U.S. soy sales to China were down 70,000 metric tons compared to the same period last year. Data also shows a surge in Brazilian Amazon deforestation between February and April of 2018, compared to 2017, a possible response by Brazil soy growers eager to profit from a trade war.
- If the U.S./China trade war results in a significant surge in Brazilian commodities production, deforestation rates there could soar. Scientists worry that Amazon deforestation, now at 17 percent, could be pushed past a 20-25 percent climate tipping point, converting rainforest to savanna, greatly swelling carbon emissions, and potentially destabilizing the regional and even global climate.
Dutch support soy transport mega-project, posing major risk to Amazon
- For more than a decade, the Netherlands has vigorously supported Brazil in development of the Northern Corridor, a mega-infrastructure transportation initiative that would transport soy and other commodities from Matto Grosso state via new road, rail and port projects to the Tapajós River in Pará state, then downriver to the Amazon, and to the Atlantic for export.
- Although the Netherlands government publically says these projects will be constructed in a “sustainable” manner and reduce fuel used in transport, analysts — and even the Dutch government itself — say that the new harbors, roads and railroads would contribute significantly to deforestation, land grabbing and rural violence by bringing many new loggers, cattle ranchers, soy growers, and settlers into the Amazon region.
- Internal documents from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, obtained through a FOIA request, show that the ministry is fully aware of these negative environmental and social impacts, but sees them as a mere public relations, or “reputation problem.”
- Internal memos uncovered by Platform Investico, a Dutch collective of investigative journalists including Mongabay contributor Karlijn Kuijpers, alerted the public to Dutch participation in Brazil’s Amazon transportation infrastructure initiative and the environmental and social harm it could do. In response to these revelations, the Dutch Labor Party has requested a debate in parliament about Dutch involvement in the Northern Corridor.
Attack of the turtles: ruralists assault environmental laws, Amazon
- With the Brazilian public focused on the October elections, and many members of congress gone home to organize runs for office, the bancada ruralista, rural lobby, has launched a raft of amendments, attached to unrelated bills, that would undo many of Brazil’s environmental and indigenous protections. There is a strong chance of passage.
- These stealth measures are known as “jabutis” or “turtles.” Two jabutis, attached to an energy bill, could lead to the privatization of Brazil’s electricity sector, and to allowing the ownership of land by foreigners, currently forbidden in Brazil, for the purpose of building dams, transmission lines, and other energy facilities. Passage could greatly benefit China.
- Another rider, attached to a bill giving emergency humanitarian assistance to Venezuelan refugees, would abolish a legal requirement to consult with indigenous communities about new energy projects to be built beside roads and railways that already cross their lands. The rider would immediately impact the Waimiri-Atroari Indians in Roraima state.
- Another jabuti would benefit Cerrado agribusiness by classifying all proposed irrigation projects as “projects of public interest,” making them easier to approve, with less rigorous environmental impact studies. Another jabuti would simplify the environmental licensing process for small hydroelectric dams, potentially harming both the Amazon and Pantanal.
Sylvia Earle on why we must act now to save the oceans
- On today’s episode, renowned marine biologist Sylvia Earle joins us for an in-depth conversation about marine conservation.
- Legendary oceanographer, marine biologist, and environmentalist Sylvia Earle, sometimes known as "Her Deepness" or "The Sturgeon General," is a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence and former chief scientist at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). A documentary film about her work called Mission Blue won a 2015 News & Documentary Emmy.
- She joins us today to discuss how effective marine protected areas are at conserving the oceans and their inhabitants, her Hope Spots program that is identifying some of the most valuable marine environments on the planet, and the latest advances in marine conservation that she is most hopeful about.
Damming the Amazon unfettered after Brazilian purge (commentary)
- In January 2018, two key Brazilian officials, Paulo Pedrosa, executive secretary of the Ministry of Mines and Energy (MME), and Luiz Augusto Barroso, the head of Energy Research Enterprise, an MME agency responsible for energy planning, announced a shift away from destructive Amazon mega-dam construction.
- They said the reason for the shift was the heavy environmental and social impacts of such dams.
- After the appointment of Moreira Franco, the new Minister of Mines and Energy, both MME officials were replaced. Franco is under investigation in the lava jato (car wash) corruption probe. Amazon dams are particularly prone to corruption.
- There has been no mention since January that any planned Amazonian dams listed for construction by 2026 will be cancelled. This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
‘Rarest’ ape’s path to survival blocked by roads, dams and agriculture
- According to a new study, the Tapanuli orangutan, one of only seven species of non-human great ape alive today, faces serious threats to its survival as infrastructure development and agriculture threaten more than one-quarter of its habitat.
- In November, a team of scientists reported that a new species of orangutan living on the Indonesian island of Sumatra was distinct from Sumatran and Bornean orangutans.
- They believe that fewer than 800 Tapanuli orangutans survive.
- Conservationists and scientists warn that a proposed 510-megawatt hydroelectric dam could push the new species closer to extinction.
‘Rarest’ ape’s path to survival blocked by roads, dams and agriculture
- According to a new study, the Tapanuli orangutan, one of only seven species of non-human great ape alive today, faces serious threats to its survival as infrastructure development and agriculture threaten more than one-quarter of its habitat.
- In November, a team of scientists reported that a new species of orangutan living on the Indonesian island of Sumatra was distinct from Sumatran and Bornean orangutans.
- They believe that fewer than 800 Tapanuli orangutans survive.
- Conservationists and scientists warn that a proposed 510-megawatt hydroelectric dam could push the new species closer to extinction.
New study finds mangroves may store way more carbon than we thought
- A new study finds mangrove soil held around 6.4 billion metric tons of carbon in 2000.
- Between 2000 and 2015, up to 122 million tons of this carbon was released due to mangrove forest loss – roughly equivalent to the annual emissions of Brazil. More than 75 percent of these soil carbon emissions came from mangrove deforestation in just three countries: Indonesia, Malaysia and Myanmar.
- Mangroves provide a slew of benefits in addition to storing carbon, reducing flooding and erosion from storms, acting as nurseries for fish, and filtering pollutants from water.
- Research indicates at least 35 percent of the world’s mangrove forests may have been lost between 1980 and 2000. Mangroves are deforested for many reasons, including to make room for shrimp farms and other forms of aquaculture, as well as for their wood. Mangroves also depend on the presence of freshwater and can die when dams and other developments stem the flow of rivers. Scientists also believe they’re at risk of mass drowning as global warming raises sea levels.
3,000 indigenous people gather in Brasilia to protest ruralist agenda
- From 23-27 April, 3,000 indigenous people from a hundred groups all across Brazil came together in Brasilia for the 15th annual encampment to demonstrate against government policies and to demand justice. While last year’s event saw police crowd control with teargas, this year’s was peaceful.
- This year’s encampment, like last year’s, was among the largest ever, catalysed by rising violence against indigenous leaders and activists, and by what participants see as the repressive and authoritarian policies of the Temer government and Congress, both of which are dominated by the bancada ruralista, the agribusiness lobby.
- Among other demands, the demonstrators called for demarcation of ancestral lands, guaranteed under Brazil’s 1988 Constitution, but not yet carried out in many indigenous areas. Protestors also asked the government to obey International Labour Organization Convention 169, which Brazil signed, and assures pre-consultation of groups impacted by large infrastructure projects.
- Indigenous women had an exceptionally strong presence at this year’s encampment, and there was further collaboration with traditional riverine group representatives, who in the past were sometimes indigenous opponents. Now, indigenous and traditional people are joining together to prevent the loss of their lands and cultures, and to preserve their way of life.
China’s Belt and Road poised to transform the Earth, but at what cost?
- With its withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and its embrace of international trade tariffs, the Trump administration has pulled back from the U.S. commitment to, and once powerful position in, the Asian sphere of influence.
- China is aggressively working to fill that void. One of its key strategies for leveraging its economic and geopolitical power is the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a nearly trillion dollar transportation and energy infrastructure construction juggernaut – a vast program launched in 2013 and not due for completion until 2049.
- The BRI is the largest infrastructure initiative in human history, and includes the Silk Road Economic Belt, a land transportation route running from China to Southern Europe via Central Asia and the Middle East, and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, a sea route connecting the port of Shanghai to Venice, Italy, via India and Africa.
- The potential environmental impacts of the mega-construction program could be severe, warn analysts. China has committed to BRI environmental and sustainability standards, at least on paper, but the sheer size of the initiative, along with China’s past environmental record and its autocratic institutions, are cause for deep concern.
Fish tales: Six amazing journeys to celebrate World Fish Migration Day
- April 21 marks World Fish Migration Day, a biennial event that strives to foster appreciation for the importance of migratory fish and their aquatic swimways.
- Healthy fish stocks with unimpeded migrations are essential to feeding humankind and maintaining the ecological equilibrium of the world’s waters.
- But fish migrations are being increasingly stressed by a worldwide boom in the building of dams that block their essential riverine passage, pollution, overfishing, lowering of water levels for agriculture and drinking water, and climate change.
- Here are six notable fish migrations to consider on this day.
Brazil’s actual forest-related CO2 emissions could blow by Paris pledge
- Brazil is reporting its CO2 emissions within U.N. guidelines, but those rules ignore significant sources of national greenhouse gas emissions ¬by disregarding carbon emitting processes related to forests, say scientists. None of this underreporting is likely unique to Brazil, but it is perhaps more acute there than in other nations due to Brazil’s vast forests.
- The U.N. doesn’t require Brazil and other developing nations to count certain greenhouse gas emissions in detail, especially sources it classifies as non-anthropogenic. This, for example, includes CO2 released from wildfires. However, most fires in the Brazilian Amazon are set by people clearing land, so those CO2 emissions are largely human-caused.
- Forest degradation, methane emitted from reservoirs, and carbon released from soils where forests are converted to croplands or pastures go partly or totally untallied in emission reports, sometimes because data is lacking, or because the UN hasn’t included the source in its reporting criteria. Another problem: low-resolution satellite monitoring allows small-scale deforestation to go undetected, so is unreported.
- As a result, Brazil’s actual carbon emissions are almost certainly higher than the figures reported to the United Nations — how much higher is unknown. But, experts say, that if this missing carbon were added to Brazil’s reported emissions, the nation would likely not meet its 2025 Paris Climate Agreement goal.
Brazil’s high court curbs executive power to dismember protected areas
- Last week, Brazil’s Supreme Court (STF) ruled that MP 558, a Provisional Measure, was unconstitutional, making it unlawful for the executive branch to use the administrative decree to reduce seven conservation units by 100,000 hectares — five of those units were in the Tapajós basin.
- In addition, the STF ruled that in future it would be unconstitutional for the executive branch to use MPs to alter the boundaries of already established conservation units. Such reductions can only be approved by the legislature.
- MPs can continue to be used in setting other policies, some harmful to the environment. Past MPs approved the building of new coal burning power plants, and for dramatically revising the Terra Legal program, revising it not to benefit the landless poor, but wealthy elites and land grabbers, say critics.
- In another win for conservationists, environment minister José Sarney Filho created five new Brazilian conservation units last week, covering 1.2 million hectares. Two were created in Bahia state, in the Cerrado savanna biome; and three in Maranhão state, in the Caatinga tropical dry forest biome.
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