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topic: Flooding
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DRC’s Kinshasa could see deadly rain and floods every 2 years: Study
In early April, extreme rainfall and flooding in and around Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, killed at least 33 people. Such catastrophic rainfall events are predicted to hit Kinshasa every two years in today’s warming climate, according to a new rapid study by World Weather Attribution (WWA), a network of […]
Indonesia’s peatlands face growing flood risks amid widespread degradation
- Nearly half of Indonesia’s peatlands are vulnerable to flooding due to degradation from exploitation, with 6 million hectares (15 million acres) — twice the size of Belgium — highly at risk.
- Peatland drainage, subsidence and fires have significantly reduced the water retention capacity of these carbon-rich ecosystems, leading to inland and coastal flooding, particularly in Sumatra and Borneo.
- Despite efforts to curb exploitation, industrial activities continue to degrade peatlands, with 33% of peat hydrological units overlapping with concessions for oil palms and pulpwood plantations.
- National and international policies, like the EU Deforestation Regulation, fail to fully address peatland degradation as a form of deforestation, prompting calls for stricter regulations and corporate accountability.
Floods devastate normally arid parts of Australia’s Queensland
Intense flooding submerged usually dry areas of Queensland state in eastern Australia during the last week of March, forcing many people to evacuate and leave their livestock behind. David Crisafulli, the Queensland premier, called the floods “unprecedented” as several places in western Queensland recorded the worst floods in the last 50 years, CNN reported. Some […]
Devastating flood forces relocation of 10,000 tortoises at Madagascar sanctuary
- In January, a rehabilitation center for critically endangered tortoises in southern Madagascar was severely impacted by heavy flooding caused by two cyclones.
- The rescue center hosts thousands of tortoises rescued from traffckers; the flooding killed more than 800 of them.
- Temporary solutions have been put in place to care for the now twice-rescued animals, as reconstruction will not be possible until later this year.
- This is the first time the conservation center has faced disruption on this scale since it was launched in 2017.
Photos: Ethiopian farmers blend tradition, innovation to sustain centuries-old agriculture
- For more than 400 years, the people of the Konso highlands in Ethiopia have used terracing and traditional farming methods to adapting to their harsh environment, building a globally recognize agricultural system on steep, erosion-prone land.
- However, in recent decades, climate change has altered once-predictable weather patterns, making it harder for small-scale farmers to maintain their traditional farming practices and secure their livelihoods.
- Farmers are adjusting to changing weather patterns by blending traditional farming methods with new techniques, aiming to safeguard their livelihoods and ensure the land remains fertile and productive.
- While experts acknowledge farmers’ efforts to adapt, they warn that these efforts alone will not suffice as climate change impacts intensify, stressing the need for external support to sustain local livelihoods and preserve traditional farming practices.
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.
African forum on urban forests calls for greater access to green spaces
- Researchers policymakers, and civil society gathered at the African Urban Forest Forum in Johannesburg to discuss the role of urban forests in African cities.
- The forum centered on how trees can make cities more climate-resilient, providing more equitable access to green spaces, and finding sustainable financing strategy for urban forests.
- In a declaration at the end of the forum, participants called for greater collaboration to increase tree canopy cover in cities and address the combined challenges of rapid urbanisation, climate change and historical inequalities.
Africa’s last tropical glaciers are melting away along with local livelihoods
- Africa’s remaining tropical glaciers are rapidly disappearing as greenhouse gas emissions drive global warming.
- New maps published by Project Pressure show the Stanley Plateau glacier, in Uganda’s Rwenzori Mountains, lost nearly 30% of its surface area between 2020 and 2024.
- The Rwenzoris’ glaciers are a vital source of water for more than 5 million people living in the plains below the mountain range; they also have cultural significance.
- Project Pressure’s ongoing surveys, carried out in collaboration with the Uganda Wildlife Authority, are intended to provide local authorities with data needed to adapt to the loss of the glaciers and other impacts of climate change.
Why are the British flooding parts of their coast?
SOMERSET, England — Steart Marshes, in southwest England, may not be the most picturesque nature reserve in the British Isles, but it is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating. Just over a decade ago, this landscape was farmland, but its precarious position, wedged between the River Parrett and the Bristol Channel, made it highly vulnerable […]
Deadly Botswana rains made more likely by climate change, rapid urbanization
Unusually heavy rainfall struck southern Botswana and eastern South Africa from Feb. 16-20, flooding cities and killing at least 31 people. In Botswana, the government said nearly 5,500 people were affected, and more than 2,000 people evacuated. A new rapid study by the World Weather Attribution (WWA), a team of international climate scientists analyzing extreme […]
A tale of two cities: What drove 2024’s Valencia and Porto Alegre floods?
- In 2024, catastrophic floods occurred in the cities of Porto Alegre, Brazil, and Valencia, Spain. These two record floods number among the thousands of extreme weather events that saw records for temperature, drought and deluge shattered across the globe. Such horrors have only continued in 2025, with the cataclysmic wildfires in Los Angeles.
- Scientists have clearly pegged these disasters to carbon emissions and intensifying climate change. But a closer look at Porto Alegre and Valencia shows that other causes contributed to the floods and droughts there, and elsewhere on the planet — problems requiring nuanced but Earth-wide changes in how people live and society develops.
- Researchers especially point to the drastic destabilization of the world’s water cycle, which is increasingly bringing far too little precipitation to many regions for far too long, only to suddenly switch to too much rain all at once — sometimes a year’s worth in a single day, as happened in Valencia when 445.5 mm (17.5 inches) fell in 24 hours.
- The problem isn’t only CO2 emissions, but also local deforestation and hardened urban infrastructure that promote flooding. But what may be seriously underestimated is how large-scale destruction of forest, marshland and other vegetation is dangerously altering rainfall patterns, a theory proposed decades ago by a little-known Spanish scientist.
Will Brazil’s President Lula wake up to the climate crisis? (commentary)
- The global climate system is even nearer than we thought to a tipping point where global warming escapes from human control. Emissions from both fossil fuel combustion and the loss and degradation of forests must be drastically reduced, beginning immediately.
- Brazil would be one of the greatest victims if global warming escapes from control, but, excepting the Ministry of Environment and Climate change, virtually the entire Brazilian government is promoting projects that will increase emissions for decades to come.
- Brazil’s President Lula so far shows no signs of waking up to the climate crisis, to its implications for Brazil, and to the climatic consequences of his current policies.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Flash floods, blackouts and a ‘sharknado’ as Cyclone Alfred lashes Australia
Heavy rainfall and flooding damaged homes and vehicles in Australia, with locals even reporting shark sightings in inland canals. Cyclone Alfred formed over the Coral Sea on Feb. 22, NASA Earth Observatory reported. It intensified for a week offshore causing heavy rainfall along the coast even before making landfall in Australia on March 8. The […]
Indonesia families evicted for Jakarta PIK2 project flooded at relocation site
- The peak of the rainy season in Indonesia has caused damage across much of the archipelago, with major landslides in forested uplands.
- On the north coast of Jakarta’s greater metropolitan area, families displaced by an upscale property development were relocated to a site that later flooded.
- A landslide in January killed 26 people in one village in Central Java province, while a married couple were swept away last week in a flash flood in a nearby community.
- Research predicts annual rainfall could increase 10% in volume by 2050 in Indonesia, while incidents of extreme rain could become more frequent.
In a seasonally flooded Amazon forest, jaguars take to the trees
- A recent study has confirmed that Amazon jaguars have developed a fascinating strategy to face seasonal river flooding: when the waters rise and flood the forests, these felines begin to live up in the trees.
- The finding, made in the Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve in Brazil’s western Amazon, surprised researchers who initially thought the animals would migrate to dry lands in search of prey.
- The research monitored 14 jaguars fitted with GPS collars between 2011 and 2020; the data showed the home range of these animals during floods remained virtually unchanged from during the dry season.
- While this adaptation is unique to Amazon jaguars, experts warn that variation in rain and flood cycles, aggravated by climate change, may pose yet another threat to this already near-threatened species.
Lake Chad isn’t shrinking — but climate change is causing other problems
- Contrary to popular conception, Lake Chad is not shrinking; new research shows that the volume of water in the lake has increased since its low point in the 1980s.
- However, more intense rain in the region, coupled with the impacts of historic drought, increases the risk of flooding.
- The region is also plagued by continuing conflict and insecurity, making to harder for people to adapt to the impacts of climate change.
- A Lutheran World Federation project is working with communities in the Lake Chad Basin on sustainable agriculture and fisheries, land restoration, conflict resolution and more.
Brazil has seen a 460% increase in climate-related disasters since the 1990s
- An unprecedented study analyzed data from 1991 to 2023 and found that each 0.1°C increase in average global air temperature led to 360 new climate disaster events and damages in Brazil amounting to R$ 5.6 billion ($970 million).
- The global warming process has accelerated over the current decade, resulting in an average of 4,077 recorded climate-related disasters per year in Brazil, compared to 725 per year during the 1990s — an increase of 460%.
- The extreme events recorded over the period — totaling 64,280 — include droughts, floods and storms in 5,117 Brazilian municipalities; over 219 million people were affected, 78 million of whom during the last four years.
- Despite the increased number of disasters and the damage they caused, Brazil’s federal budget for risk and disaster management has been cut every year between 2012 and 2023 by an average of R$ 200 million ($34.6 million) per year.
Cyclone Elvis kills 5 in Madagascar as another storm approaches
Madagascar is bracing for Tropical Cyclone Faida to make landfall on its northern coast on Feb. 4, even as it deals with the aftermath of another recently dissipated storm, Elvis, that reportedly killed at least five people. Those killed during Elvis’s passage were involved in “lightning events” in Vohibato district in eastern Madagascar, according to […]
Explosive ‘bomb cyclone’ pummels Europe, hitting UK hardest
Back-to-back storms have ravaged the U.K. and neighboring Ireland and France, causing torrential rains, power outages and flooding the past several days and overall “wild weather,” the Associated Press reported. Storm Éowyn first struck the Britain and Ireland on Jan. 23, bringing with it heavy rains and strong winds, followed by Storm Herminia soon after. […]
Rising deforestation threatens rare species in Indonesia’s ancient Lake Poso
- The forests around the ancient Lake Poso in Indonesia’s Central Sulawesi province are being lost to mining, oil palm plantations and smallholder farm expansion, threatening both unique species and local residents.
- The lake and its surroundings are designated as an Alliance for Zero Extinction site, hosting several threatened species found nowhere else on Earth, including a unique crab species and various fish, though scientists warn research on the ecosystem remains limited.
- Historical religious conflict and a controversial hydropower project have complicated environmental protection efforts, with the dam disrupting traditional fishing practices and contributing to increased flooding that affects local farming.
- Community groups are working to protect the ecosystem while balancing development needs, though the loss of forest buffer systems threatens to overcome the lake’s natural resilience.
Global temperature in 2024 hits record 1.55°C over pre-industrial level
The year 2024 was the hottest on record, with an average temperature of 1.55° Celsius (2.79° Fahrenheit) higher than pre-industrial levels, surpassing the previous record set in 2023, according to six international data sets. Scientists caution that the data represent the average for the Earth’s year-round weather and don’t mean that the climate has exceeded […]
At least 11,500 deaths linked to extreme weather in 2024
Extreme weather in 2024 affected around 18 in every 1,000 people across the globe, according to preliminary figures from the International Disaster Database. Mongabay has compiled the data into an interactive dashboard below. Intense droughts, floods, storms, heat waves and other climate-driven disasters claimed more than 11,500 lives and affected at least 148 million people […]
Climate change fueled record extreme weather events in 2024
Climate change fueled some of the worst extreme weather events on record in 2024, according to a recent report. Researchers at the World Weather Attribution (WWA) and Climate Central reviewed heat waves, droughts, wildfires, storms and floods that struck in 2024, and found that nearly every extreme weather event they studied was “made more intense […]
Southeast Asia in review: 2024
- 2024 was a grim year for conservation and its champions across Southeast Asia, as deforestation surged due to infrastructure, agriculture, logging and mining, threatening critical ecosystems and protected areas.
- Environmental activists and journalists also faced increasing risks, including detentions, harassment and violence, highlighting a growing climate of repression by governments across the region.
- Despite this, there were some conservation successes of note, including wildlife population recoveries, biodiversity discoveries, and Indigenous community victories against harmful development projects.
- Grassroots and nature-based initiatives, like mangrove restoration and sustainable agriculture, showcased effective approaches to enhancing biodiversity and resilience while also improving community livelihood.
How the Sahel junta is responding to climate change amid political isolation
- Torrential rains during the Sahel’s rainy season (July to September) caused widespread flooding, displacing millions and submerging tens of thousands of hectares of cropland across Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Sudan.
- Meanwhile, military coups in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have disrupted governance and climate adaptation projects. Political isolation from Western nations has further hindered access to international climate finance, leaving communities struggling to cope with extreme weather events.
- Organizations like the Sahara and Sahel Observatory (OSS) emphasize empowering local communities through initiatives like Water User Associations and agroecology. These efforts focus on sustainable land and water management, leveraging local knowledge for resilience.
- Despite the Sahel’s potential for renewable energy and sustainable agriculture, political instability, weak governance and funding gaps have slowed progress.
Across continents, Mongabay fellows share insights from reporting in the field
- Mongabay’s Y. Eva Tan Conservation Reporting Fellows spend six months diving into climate, science and environment reporting — and gaining insights that shape the way they approach their work as environmental journalists.
- In this essay, three recent fellows share some of the biggest lessons they learned through the reporting they published during the fellowship.
- As these reflections from India, Brazil and Nigeria show, there are many areas of overlap experienced among communities across regions and continents.
Balochistan’s Gwadar city sits at the crossroads of climate and conflict
- A new study examines the links between conflict and climate in Pakistan’s Balochistan province, where extreme weather can be a threat multiplier.
- The port city of Gwadar serves as an example, as local residents have long had grievances against the state, which were exacerbated by recent flooding that killed several people and displaced hundreds.
- Experts highlight the absence of data-driven policies, citing a gap in research that has hindered solutions; they call for investment in data and the inclusion of local people in decision-making and infrastructure planning.
From Bhutan to Nigeria & Kenya, women endure climate change differently than men
- Research shows that globally, women and girls suffer greater effects of climate change and environmental disasters than men; at the same time, women environmental journalists often face greater obstacles on the job, and women’s voices are often missing from stories about climate change.
- Three recent Mongabay fellows, all women, report on specific examples from their home countries (Bhutan, Nigeria, Kenya) in which women disproportionately experience the effects of climate change and extreme weather.
- In all three examples, women exhibit a perseverance that ensures their own and their families’ survival — and sometimes aids their own independence and resourcefulness.
Officials pledge zoo review after Sumatran elephant is killed in Bali flood
DENPASAR, Indonesia — Conservation authorities in Indonesia have launched a review of the main zoo on the resort island of Bali, after an elephant there was swept away and killed in a flash flood on Dec. 16. ”We‘ll evaluate the management of wildlife, especially the remaining 14 elephants” at Bali Zoo, said Ratna Hendramoko, head of the […]
Climate change fuels African floods that hit harder in vulnerable regions
- Extreme rainfall and flooding across Sudan, Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria and Chad this year led to thousands of deaths and millions of displacements, mirroring what occurred in the region in 2022.
- Research by World Weather Attribution shows that such extreme floods, linked to anthropogenic climate change, are likely to become more intense and frequent in the future.
- Existing conflicts, poverty, aging infrastructure and socioeconomic inequalities further exacerbate the exposure of vulnerable communities to extreme floods; local leaders and experts call for improved sanitation and urban development policies as well as adaptation strategies in preparation for future floods.
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.
Eastern U.S. floods could persist longer toward the end of the century
- Fifty years from now, floods in the eastern half of the United States will last longer as climate change creates warmer and wetter weather patterns, a new study suggests.
- Floods will last longest in the winter, the analysis predicts, marking a shift in damaging flood seasons.
- The trends underscore a need to renovate levees and dams, flood channels, and other infrastructure to protect residents and cities, researchers say.
For a storm-prone Philippine city, flood control is about more than infrastructure
A history of devastating tropical cyclones prompted the construction of flood-mitigation infrastructure in the Philippine city of Cagayan de Oro over the past decade. However, experts say the infrastructure alone won’t be sufficient to address the flood risks amid increasingly frequent and stronger storms due to climate change. Residents also highlight the loss of native […]
India, U.K. deal with storms that are ‘symptom of our changing climate’
India is bracing for intense rainfall over the next few days as a deep depression over the Bay of Bengal is set to intensify into what will be called Cyclone Fengal by Nov. 29, according to local media reports. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) said the cyclone is likely to pass near the coast of […]
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.
Organizations tackle droughts, floods in Brazil by planting forests
- Many areas of Brazil have been hit with severe droughts and floods in recent years; scientists say climate change is increasing the incidence of extreme weather events.
- Forests protect against erosion and pollution and help store water in soil and aquifers, buoying water security.
- Organizations across the country are leading efforts to reforest cleared areas — particularly along rivers and other water sources —to mitigate the damaging effects of droughts, floods and other effects of climate change, as well as safeguard and improve habitat for wildlife.
- Experts and stakeholders say broader support is needed at the federal level, while a representative of Brazil’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change says the government is rolling out conservation plans of its own.
At least 94 dead as worst storm in decades hits Spain’s Valencia region
Torrential rains and flash floods have left at least 92 people dead and dozens missing in Spain’s Valencia region, in what is the region’s worst storm in nearly three decades, according to Spain’s Emergency Coordination Center. A man in Malaga and an elderly woman in the neighboring Cuenca region also died. On the evening of […]
Six months after its worst floods, Rio Grande do Sul works to bounce back
- A combination of wet El Niño weather and human-induced climate change were key drivers of the worst flooding event in Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul state earlier this year.
- The flooding affected 90% of the state and displaced more than half a million people.
- Poor land management is also responsible for the region’s vulnerability to floods, as current agricultural practices in the highlands favor runoff and reduce the soil’s ability to soak up water, with lowlands particularly exposed to high waters.
- While some scientists are still deciphering the causes and behavior of the floodwaters, other experts are working to rehabilitate farmland, tackle soil erosion, and source native seeds for ecological restoration.
Nepal’s deadly floods trigger calls for climate adaptation
Nepal is grappling with the aftermath of record floods that killed at least 246 people, including 32 children. The late September floods also displaced more than 10,000 households across the nation’s capital, Kathmandu, and surrounding districts, and caused widespread damage to infrastructure. The unprecedented rainfall on Sept. 28 was the heaviest ever recorded in Kathmandu, […]
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.
Supreme Court decision on saving Kathmandu rivers stirs up heated reactions
- The Supreme Court of Nepal has ruled to extend no-construction zones along major rivers in Kathmandu Valley, sparking varied reactions.
- Environmental activists praise the decision for addressing severe river pollution and encroachment, but the federal government has requested a review due to local opposition.
- The ruling introduces an additional 20-meter (66-foot) buffer zone, which would impact thousands of households, raising concerns about property rights and potential displacement.
- Critics argue the ruling will cause economic hardship and require substantial compensation, prompting the government and local authorities to seek revisions.
Heavy rains in Lake Chad Basin leave hundreds dead across countries
At least 621 people have been killed and thousands more displaced by floods around Lake Chad, which sits at the border region of several countries in Central and West Africa. Since early September, parts of Cameroon, Chad and Nigeria have experienced some of their heaviest rains in decades. Heavy rains have overwhelmed local systems, Justin […]
Bangkok turns to urban forests to beat worsening floods
- Bangkok is launching city forests to help beat flooding by soaking up excess rainwater runoff.
- A new park slated to open in December will feature 4,500 trees, a floodplain and a weir to slow the flow of water; another newly opened $20 million city forest acts as a sponge during the monsoon season.
- Bangkok is sinking, and fast: according to the World Bank, 40% of the Thai capital could be flooded by 2030.
- The key to solving the city’s flooding problem is to learn to live with water, not to rid the city of water, says one landscape architect helping to launch the urban forests.
Climate change could return a stolen lake to Indigenous people, a century later
- Semá:th Xhotsa, or Sumas Lake, in Canada was the center of First Nations’ food system and culture, before European colonists drained it in 1924 to create farmland.
- Almost 100 years later, catastrophic flooding threatens to refill the lake and displace the farmers.
- First Nations people and university researchers have proposed restoring the lake ecosystem to adapt to climate change-driven flooding, and as a method of reparation, but the local government is pushing back.
Women in Sierra Leone unite after devastating floods | Mongabay Sessions
- In this episode of Mongabay Sessions, Romi Castagnino speaks with documentary director Ibrahim S. Miles Kamara about his film “Freetown Floodfighters: Women’s Resilience on the Frontline.”
- The documentary shows the efforts of community groups led by women to improve resilience in Freetown, capital of Sierra Leone, in response to climate change-induced floods.
- Mongabay Sessions is a video series that features conservation players from around the world.
Climate surprises: Amazonia and the lessons of Brazil’s catastrophic flood in Rio Grande do Sul (commentary)
- Brazil’s catastrophic flood in the state of Rio Grande do Sul is helping to raise public awareness of climate change but has had no visible effect on the Brazilian government’s actions and plans on greenhouse gas emissions. The flood provides an example of “climate surprises,” which are expected to increase further in frequency and severity with projected global warming.
- Amazonia has already been the victim of a series of such surprises, and these threaten the Amazon forest with collapse and the consequent pushing of global warming beyond a point of no return.
- Except for the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change, the rest of Brazil’s presidential administration is on the wrong side of the issue, expanding fossil fuel extraction and promoting deforestation in various ways. An immediate turnaround is needed.
- This is a commentary and does not necessarily reflect the views of Mongabay.
Women in Sierra Leone unite after devastating floods
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone – In this episode of Mongabay Sessions, Romi Castagnino, Mongabay’s associate video producer, interviews documentary director Ibrahim S. Miles Kamara about his impactful film, Freetown Floodfighters: Women’s Resilience on the Frontline. This documentary highlights the efforts of community groups led by women to build resilience against climate change-induced floods in Freetown, Sierra […]
Floods set to worsen on Sumatra peat as landscape gives way
- A major flood at the turn of the year in Indonesia’s Riau province caused long-term traffic gridlock affecting thousands, with attendant knock-on effects for economic activity in the region.
- One of Riau’s leading experts on peat hydrology told Mongabay that deterioration of the province’s carbon-rich peatland increases risks of disastrous flooding owing to reduced drainage, among other factors.
- Indonesia’s peatland restoration agency said it had worked to rehabilitate 223,258 hectares (551,683 acres) of peat in Riau by end-2023, although large areas requiring urgent restoration work can’t be accessed because they’re located in private plantation concessions.
‘Weather whiplash’ cycles of floods & droughts imperil Nigerian farming
- Farmers in Nigeria — and other regions, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa — are suffering huge losses due to extreme weather shifts in quick succession, a phenomenon that researchers refer to as “weather whiplash.”
- Research shows a connection between poverty and weather whiplash, and farmers in poorer regions are five times more exposed to drought-downpour cycles than people in wealthier regions.
- In April, the independent SciLine service for journalists hosted a webinar with agricultural scientists who discussed these extreme weather cycles, the impacts of climate change on agriculture in different regions and the need for homegrown approaches to support agriculture resilience.
Sumatra villages count cost of deadly river tsunami swelled by illegal logging
- Several days of extreme rainfall beginning March 7 triggered fatal flash flooding across Indonesia’s West Sumatra province, resulting in at least 30 deaths and devastating villages on the fringe of Kerinci Seblat National Park.
- Deforestation upstream of the affected areas has exacerbated the risk of landslides and flash floods, according to officials.
- The Indonesian Forum for the Environment, a national civil society organization, called for government action to address illegal logging and land management practices to prevent future disasters.
We need rapid response support for Indigenous peoples in the face of growing extreme weather events (commentary)
- Climate change can sometimes feel distant and intangible, but the increasingly frequent extreme weather events in tropical forest regions like the Amazon and Congo Basin are already having very real-world impacts on Indigenous and other local communities in these areas.
- While Indigenous and grassroots organizations are often the first responders and are best placed to know the needs of their communities, they face huge challenges in accessing heavily bureaucratic disaster response funding.
- This is why we are calling for the establishment of a dedicated fit-for-purpose rapid response fund for them to be able to respond and recover from such events.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
‘Another catastrophe’: Flooding destroys Indigenous agroforestry projects in Peru’s Amazon
- Heavy rains likely caused by El Niño began flooding Peru’s Ene River at the beginning of March, with waters reaching around 2 feet high and spreading across 5,000 hectares (12,355 acres) of land occupied by around 300 Indigenous Asháninka families.
- Families in five Asháninka communities lost their homes as well as years of work on successful and sustainable agroforestry projects for cacao, coffee and timber, among other products.
- The flood waters have only recently receded, so a long-term or even mid-term plan for recovering their agroforestry projects hasn’t been developed yet.
- The Asháninka have faced many other setbacks over the years, from drug trafficking groups to unsustainable development projects, but have often overcome them to defend their territory. This flood marks the latest setback.
Big problems for little animals when floodwaters rise, study finds
- Increasingly frequent and severe weather events are testing the resilience of both human and animal communities across Africa; Cyclone Idai, which made landfall in Mozambique in 2019, caused massive flooding that killed more than 1,600 people.
- Researchers studying the aftermath of Idai in Gorongosa National Park found many smaller-bodied animals in low-lying areas drowned or starved before forage recovered from the severe flooding that followed the cyclone.
- Larger animals were able to both reach higher ground ahead of rising waters and adapt to reduced availability of food in the long months it took for the floodplain to dry out and recover.
- The study is a rare example of close monitoring of animals before, during and after an extreme weather event, and provides conservationists with important insights into planning and managing protected areas in a changing climate.
In climate-related flooding, a Ugandan river turns poisonous
- Uganda’s Nyamwamba river, in the Rwenzori Mountains, has begun to flood catastrophically in recent years, partly due to climate change.
- Along the river are copper tailings pools from an old Canadian mining operation, which are becoming increasingly eroded by the flooding.
- According to a series of studies, these tailings have been washing into the water supply and soil of the Nyamwamba River Basin, contaminating human tissue, food and water with deadly heavy metals.
- Cancer rates are higher than normal near the tailings pools, and scientists fear that as the flooding continues to worsen, so will the health crisis.
Climate change brings a river’s wrath down on western Uganda
- Since the 1960s, Uganda’s climate has warmed by an average of 1.3°C (2.3°F).
- The warming is partly responsible for an increasing number of catastrophic floods on the Nyamwamba River, in western Uganda’s Rwenzori Mountains.
- In 2020 alone, 173,000 people were affected by flooding in Kasese district, when 25,000 houses were destroyed.
- Many of those rendered homeless by the floods continue to languish in temporary housing camps four years on.
As climate disasters claim their children, Bangladeshi mothers seek safety in bigger families
- Climate change is exacerbating child mortality in flood-prone areas of Bangladesh, prompting mothers to have larger families as a response to the fear of losing children to disasters.
- Studies indicate an 8% surge in infant mortality risk in flood-prone regions, resulting in more than 150,000 lives lost between 1988 and 2017.
- While Bangladesh has seen improvements in disaster management, reduced cyclone deaths, and progress in health for mothers and children, climate change poses new threats, especially to vulnerable coastal communities lacking adequate protection.
- A National Adaptation Plan offers solutions such as water conservation and livelihood opportunities, but challenges like funding, coordination and transparency need attention for effective implementation, experts say.
As Sri Lanka floods swell with climate change, so does human-crocodile conflict
- Sri Lanka is among the countries most vulnerable to climate change, with long drought spells, receiving intense rain during a shorter period with a marked increase in flood events.
- During flooding, crocodiles inhabiting rivers tend to reach land and move closer to human settlements, increasing the risk of encounters with people.
- The Nilwala River flows through southern Sri Lanka and recent flood events have increased croc encounters with humans in the Matara district and escalated threats to human safety, resulting in disaster management responses.
- During recent flooding events, no serious incidents linked to crocodiles were reported, but wildlife officials had to chase crocs away from riverbanks, highlighting the need for an immediate and durable solution for the human-crocodile conflict around the Nilwala River area.
Thailand tries nature-based water management to adapt to climate change
- With an economy largely underpinned by irrigated crops like rice, water is a crucial resource in Thailand. But as climate change exacerbates floods and droughts in the country, sustainable water management is an increasing challenge.
- Nature-based solutions that incorporate the natural processes of the country’s abundant rivers, floodplains and watershed forests are beginning to be trialed via various projects at large and small scales.
- A new report assesses the efficacy of two nature-based approaches to water management in Thailand, which represent a step away from the country’s typically top-down, hard-engineering approach and present several benefits to the environment and communities.
- However, environmental and societal tradeoffs, complex policy frameworks, and the need for greater understanding and expertise around the concept, design and implementation of nature-based approaches are barriers to their widespread implementation.
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.
Kenya’s Lake Victoria floods leave orphaned children to run their households
- Beginning in 2019, devastating floods on the shores of Kenya’s Lake Victoria have inundated homes, displaced families and left some orphaned children in charge of caring for their siblings and running the household.
- Many families continue to live in makeshift camps, hoping to rebuild and renew their lives; the effects of the flooding have been particularly harsh on children who have had to drop out of school or work to ensure the family’s survival.
- Experts attribute the floods to a combination of factors, including climate change, increased rainfall and lack of vegetation to control runoff; in 2015, an international research team predicted swiftly rising waters that could harm the region.
- UNICEF reports a concerning increase in the number of children affected by flooding in recent years, as climate change leads to more crises that can disrupt education, destabilize families and leave long-term effects on child development and psychosocial well-being.
Super flock of pigeons leaves Nepali researchers asking what happened
- Researchers in Nepal say they still don’t know what was behind a massive flock of some 7,500 woodpigeons observed in the country’s plains last December.
- A recently published study suggests a range of factors, from food availability to predator avoidance, combined to bring together the flock, which was 25 times larger than the biggest flock previously observed here.
- Climate factors may also have played a part, particularly the impact of heavy rains on the birds’ overwintering grounds in Pakistan.
- Researchers say more studies are needed to get to the bottom of the mystery, and plan to watch out for another super flock this coming winter.
Can land titles save Madagascar’s embattled biodiversity and people?
- Through its Titre Vert or Green Title initiative, the Malagasy government is opening up a path to land ownership for its most vulnerable citizens in the hopes it will help tackle hunger, internal migration, and forest loss.
- The state is using the initiative to lean on potential migrants to remain in the country’s deep south, where five years of failed rains have left 2 million people hungry, instead of migrating north, where they are often blamed for social tensions and for destroying forests.
- This March, the Malagasy government started work on a Titre Vert enclave in the Menabe region, a popular destination for migrants from the drought-hit south, to dissuade them from clearing unique dry forests to grow crops.
- Critics say the government is holding people back in a rain-starved region without providing enough support; in Menabe, backers of the project hope to provide ample assistance to get migrants out of the forests and onto their feet.
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.
Expanding agriculture could worsen flooding in South American plains, study says
- The South American plains, including Las Pampas and the Gran Chaco, have seen agricultural activity expand drastically to meet international demand.
- A new study published last month in Science found that agriculture is exacerbating flooding in the region, which could disrupt food supplies and prices in the future.
- The study said dedicating more space to deeper-rooted forests and developing crop rotations with more flexible water table depths could stave off disaster.
Red floods near giant Indonesia nickel mine blight farms and fishing grounds
- Farming communities in the shadow of Sulawesi’s giant Pomalaa nickel mining area say their fields have been flooded with red water, possibly laterite waste from the mining operations.
- Local farmers blame flooding from the mine for longer harvest cycles and reduced productivity.
- Indonesia’s biggest environmental NGO says the government should review mining permits to safeguard rice fields.
Flooding for hydropower dams hits forest-reliant bats hard, study shows
- Researchers have found that bats specialized to feed on insects within the dense canopy of tropical forests are disproportionately affected by hydropower development.
- The study in Peninsular Malaysia adds to a growing body of evidence demonstrating how hydropower developments impoverish tropical ecosystems.
- Although forest-specialist bats were lost from the flooded landscape, bats that forage along forest edges and in open space were still present.
- To minimize localized extinctions, the researchers advocate a preventive rather than mitigative approach to hydropower planning that prioritizes habitat connectivity and avoids creating isolated forest patches.
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.
After historic storm in New Zealand, Māori leaders call for disaster relief and rights
- After Cyclone Gabrielle hit New Zealand and mostly impacted Indigenous Māori homes, Māori delegates attending the United Nation’s conference on Indigenous peoples say the government has left them out of recovery services and funding.
- The delegates hope their presence at the United Nations forum will increase pressure on the New Zealand government to include Māori people in disaster recovery plans, provide more support for Indigenous-led climate initiatives, and fully implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
- Māori knowledge, known as Mātauranga Māori, has been increasingly included in climate and conservation projects across the country as part of the ‘Vision Mātauranga’ framework, but it has also attracted fierce debate on its status within the scientific community.
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.
Do tiger-dense habitats also help save carbon stock? It’s complicated
- A new study centered on Nepal’s Chitwan National Park attempts to identify whether there’s a relationship between successful tiger conservation and habitats with high levels of carbon locked away in the vegetation.
- It found that within protected areas, high-density mixed forests had the most carbon stock sequestered in vegetation; however, tiger density was highest in riverine forests.
- This represents a trade-off that conservation planners need to tackle between tiger and carbon conservation.
- Researchers have cautioned against generalizing the findings, saying that more studies and data are needed to better understand the issue.
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.
Herders turn to fishing in the desert amid severe drought, putting pressure on fish population
- As Northern Kenya’s unabating drought continues, a growing wave of pastoralists are finding it challenging to keep their livestock alive and are switching to fishing in Lake Turkana, the world’s largest desert lake.
- However, environmentalists, fishing authorities, and some fishers worry that potential overfishing and increased pressures on fish populations will cause a collapse in fish stocks and the lake’s ecosystem.
- Authorities are also concerned about the rampant use of illegal fishing gear, such as thin mesh nets that catch undersized fish in shallow breeding zones, and an illegal tilapia smuggling network draining the lake by the tons.
- Though no studies have yet been done to assess fish populations, some environmentalists and fishers are calling for better enforcement of regulations to keep livelihoods afloat.
Humanitarian experts report ‘cascading crises’ as climate, health emergencies soar
- Globally, humanitarian aid workers are facing complex climate and health crises that require urgent adaptations within a shrinking humanitarian space, according to a recent piece in the Lancet.
- About 274 million people worldwide are now in need of humanitarian assistance — up from 235 million in 2021 — as climate emergencies intensify.
- In Kenya, families on the shores of Lake Victoria were displaced at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic and humanitarian organizations played a key role in supporting villagers to cope with the dual shocks.
- Data from Children Service Department show that currently, at least 3,420 children and 12 households in the Lake Victoria area are headed by children living in makeshift camps.
Japan’s example: Can forest planting reduce climate disaster risk?
- In disaster-prone Japan, torrential rains exacerbated by the climate crisis have caused serious flooding and landslides in recent years, including in the country’s many forests.
- While acknowledging the limits of forests’ ability to prevent landslides occurring in the bedrock, Japan’s Forestry Agency is implementing both forest improvement activities and erosion control facility construction to help mitigate future landslide disasters.
- Japan’s monoculture plantation forests, which represent 40% of the nation’s total forest cover, are seen by some experts and civil society members as insufficient to prevent mountain disasters. However, other experts say that a much wider range of geological and environmental factors, not just tree species, determine a forest’s disaster mitigation ability.
- Along Japan’s Pacific coast, others are using trees planted on raised embankments as an as-yet-untested countermeasure against future tsunamis, a type of disaster experts say can also be exacerbated by sea level rise due to climate change.
In Sierra Leone’s fishing villages, a reality check for climate aid
- In April, Mongabay’s Ashoka Mukpo visited the Sherbro estuary, a sprawling riverine ecosystem of mangroves and coastal fishing villages on the Sierra Leonean coastline.
- Like other coastal areas in West Africa, the Sherbro estuary is already suffering the impacts of climate change, including flooding and higher temperatures.
- Between 2016 and 2021, USAID financed mangrove replanting and the construction of makeshift seawalls in villages here as part of a coastal climate resilience aid project.
- The project’s struggles here are an example of the difficulties that climate aid efforts can face when they meet the economic and social needs of people in vulnerable areas.
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.
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
Deadly landslides prompt Philippine president to call for tree planting
- Typhoon Nalgae, which made five landfalls on Oct. 29, killed 123 people across the Philippines, including at least 61 who died in floods and landslides on the southern island of Mindanao.
- After inspecting the damage wrought by the storm, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. blamed deforestation and climate change for the scale of the disaster, and called on flood control plans to include tree planting.
- The Philippines already has an ambitious tree-planting program, but an audit found it has so far fallen short of its target.
Cambodia’s elites swallow up Phnom Penh’s lakes, leaving the poor marooned
- Lakes in Phnom Penh are fast being filled in and parceled off as prime real estate to wealthy and politically connected individuals.
- Families who have for generations fished and practiced aquaculture on the lakes and surrounding wetlands face eviction and the loss of livelihoods.
- At the same time, experts warn that filling in these natural rainwater reservoirs risks exacerbating flood intensity and damage in the Cambodian capital.
- This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network where Gerald Flynn is a fellow.
Java communities rally as clock ticks on cleanup of ‘world’s dirtiest river’
- A national program to transform Java’s Citarum River into a source of drinking water expires in 2025.
- A reforestation program in uplands near the source of the river is drawing on community volunteers.
- West Java Governor Ridwan Kamil tells Mongabay that residents will see improved water quality by 2025 and that there is political will to tackle the crisis.
Elevated homesteads give hope to flood-hit communities in Bangladesh
- Increasingly severe flooding in Bangladesh threatens the homes and livelihoods of some 10 million people who live on river islands known as chars.
- The rate of erosion of these chars has increased in recent years amid an intensified monsoon season that swells the volume of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers where the low-lying chars are located.
- As an adaptation measure the government and NGOs are supporting char communities to raise the height of their homesteads to protect themselves during the monsoon.
Farmers feel the pressure after conservation crackdown around Cambodia’s Tonle Sap Lake
- Cambodia’s Tonle Sap Lake is surrounded by a conservation area that consists of three zones: Zone 1 and 2, where farming is allowed, and Zone 3, which is closest to the lake and where agriculture and fishing are officially banned.
- The conservation area was enacted in 2011, but farmers and fishers largely had unfettered use of Zone 3 land until 2021, when Prime Minister Hun Sen ordered a crackdown on all clearing and agricultural use of flooded forest land.
- The ban opens an opportunity for the government to restore Tonle Sap’s unique forests, and satellite data already show a drop in deforestation activity in 2022.
- However, farmers living around the lake say they’re hard-pressed to survive without the agriculture they’ve depended on for years.
Small mammals stranded by hydropower dams die out surprisingly fast: Study
- Forest fragmentation has long been known to impact species survival: small, isolated populations with access to limited resources are at greater risk of extinction.
- In 1987, the Chiew Larn reservoir was formed in southern Thailand as part of a hydropower scheme, creating more than 100 forested islands inhabited by newly stranded animals.
- A new study documents the alarmingly quick collapse of the reservoir archipelago’s small mammal communities, resulting in the loss of nearly every species and dominance by one invasive rodent.
- Tropical biologists warn the study reflects the global trend of fragmentation in tropical forests, which is ravaging both species diversity and ecosystem resilience.
Climate change amplifies the risk of conflict, study from Africa shows
- New research shows that climate change can amplify the risk of conflict by as much as four to five times in a 550-kilometer (340-mile) radius, with rising temperatures and extreme rainfall acting as triggers.
- Many countries most vulnerable to climate impacts are beset by armed conflicts, such as Somalia, which is grappling with widespread drought amid a decades-long civil war; the research suggests the country is trapped in a vicious cycle of worsening climatic disasters and conflict.
- Both too little rain and too much rain are triggers for conflict, the research finds: persistent rainfall failures increase instability over a broader geographic region while extreme rainfall increases the likelihood of confrontations over a smaller area and for a shorter time, the analysis suggests.
- The research underscores the importance of tackling climate change impacts and conflict mitigation together because misguided climate adaptation strategies can intensify existing tensions.
‘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.
‘The volume of water is beyond control’: Q&A with flood expert M. Monirul Qader Mirza
- An early start to the monsoon and unusually heavy rains have caused massive flooding in northeastern Bangladesh, leaving millions of people stranded in floodwaters.
- The Meghna River Basin is accustomed to these flash floods, but the scale of the disaster this year has been compounded by human encroachment and development in the watershed region, said M. Monirul Qader Mirza, a water management expert.
- In an interview with Mongabay, Mirza emphasized the need for infrastructure planning to consider river and rainfall dynamics to mitigate flood risk, and to have an early-warning system in place to minimize damage.
- Mirza also said that identifying the role of climate change in the problem is complex and requires extensive studies and modeling, but added it’s indisputable that rainfall patterns have become increasingly erratic.
Cradle of transformation: The Mediterranean and climate change
- The Mediterranean region is warming 20% faster than the world as a whole, raising concerns about the impacts that climate change and other environmental upheaval will have on ecosystems, agriculture and the region’s 542 million people.
- Heat waves, drought, extreme weather and sea-level rise are among the impacts that the region can expect to see continue through the end of the century, and failing to stop emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases could make these issues worse.
- Charting a course that both mitigates climate change and bolsters adaption to its effects is further complicated by the Mediterranean’s mix of countries, cultures and socioeconomics, leading to wide gaps in vulnerability in the region.
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.
South Africa declares national emergency as flood toll crosses 440
- Flooding and landslides following record-breaking rainfall caused hundreds of deaths and displaced 40,000 people in KwaZulu-Natal province.
- The damage is centered around Durban, South Africa’s third most populous city, which is particularly vulnerable to flash floods.
- In the coming days, 10,0000 military troops will join search and rescue operations and provide aid to the thousands of people impacted by the tragedy.
- President Cyril Ramaphosa said the floods are a reminder of how a changing climate is fueling more extreme weather. However, scientists are still investigating the role of anthropogenic climate change in this disaster.
As rising seas destroy Ghana’s coastal communities, researchers warn against a seawall-only solution
- Some 37% of Ghana’s coastal land was lost to erosion and flooding between 2005 and 2017.
- Severe storm surges flooded several communities in 2021, prompting the evacuation of thousands of people.
- Research indicates around 340 million people worldwide will be affected by global warming-fueled sea level rise by the middle of the century. Ghana’s government is responding to the growing crisis by fortifying some coastal areas with seawalls, but researchers say relying on seawalls alone may do more harm than good.
- This story was produced with support from the Pulitzer Center.
In trio of storms hitting Western Europe, role of climate change is complicated
- In early February, a polar vortex caused a series of three storms — Dudley, Eunice and Franklin — to hit the U.K. and Western Europe, unleashing heavy rains and winds across the region.
- The most powerful storm was Eunice, which had wind measurements of up to 196 kilometers per hour (122 miles per hour).
- Storms striking in quick succession are not unusual for Western Europe.
- While climate change did not necessarily drive these winter storms, it likely made the rainfall and storm surge more intense.
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.
Coastal deforestation fuels more frequent storms in West Africa, study warns
- Storms are hitting the densely populated coastal pocket of West Africa twice as frequently as 30 years ago, a new study says.
- Declining forest cover is fueling this increased storm frequency in the coastal regions of southern West Africa.
- With the loss of forests, the daytime temperature difference between land and sea is widening, generating stronger winds and feeding convective storms.
- “The coastal location of deforestation in SWA [southern West Africa] is typical of many tropical deforestation hotspots, and the processes highlighted here are likely to be of wider global relevance,” the study authors write.
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.
Sinkholes emerge in rural Kenya after series of floods, droughts
- In recent years, a number of sinkholes have emerged in Baringo county, a geologically active region in western Kenya’s Great Rift Valley.
- According to geologists, their appearance can be linked both to the worsening impacts of climate change through floods and droughts, and local communities drilling boreholes along precarious fault lines to access more water.
- According to members of the community, the sinkholes have yet to spur the county or the government into action, with food aid currently provided by local human rights organizations.
- Increases in floods are driving human-wildlife conflict for space, and pastoralists are having difficulty adapting to environmental changes.
Tigers, jaguars under threat from tropical hydropower projects: Study
- A new study reveals that more than one-fifth of the world’s tigers and one in 200 jaguars have been affected by habitat loss linked to hydropower projects.
- Land flooded for hydroelectric reservoirs has resulted in the substantial loss of habitat for both top predators, and future hydropower projects planned within the species’ ranges fail to consider the big cats’ long-term survival, the study says.
- Scientists struggle to track the fate of tigers and jaguars displaced by hydropower reservoirs, but their chances of survival are very low, according to the study’s authors.
- The researchers recommend that policymakers minimize the impacts of future hydropower projects by avoiding landscapes deemed high priority for conservation.
With loss of forests, Bali villages find themselves vulnerable to disaster
- Bali’s Penyaringan village was hit by flash floods in September, which some have linked to the ongoing loss of its forest.
- While the village’s forest has been designated as a protected area, it’s still subject to encroachment by villagers for the planting of short-lived crops, a practice known locally as ngawen.
- To regulate the practice and regenerate the forest, the village formed a management body that restricts the extent and types of crops that villagers can grow and requires them to also plant trees.
With La Niña conditions back, is it good news for tropical forests?
- La Niña conditions have developed across the Pacific Ocean for the second year in a row, according to forecasters at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.
- A phase of the El Niño Southern Oscillation ocean-atmosphere cycle, La Niña heralds broadly cooler and wetter conditions across the tropics, with above-average rainfall predicted for important tropical rainforests in Southeast Asia and South America.
- Although the current conditions emerge toward the end of the fire season in the Amazon and Indonesia, experts say these biomes will benefit from wet conditions conducive to forest and peatland growth and recovery.
- Studies indicate that climate change will increase the frequency and severity of La Niña and El Niño events, which will occur against the backdrop of a warmer world, with inevitable implications for natural ecosystems and livelihoods.
From flood to drought, Brazil’s Acre state swings between weather extremes
- Extreme weather conditions, from massive flooding to severe water shortages, have rocked cities and small communities alike in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon this year, a trend experts attribute to climate change and human actions.
- The Acre River, which crosses the state of same name in the western Brazilian Amazon, is experiencing its second-worst drought in recorded history, with water levels close to record lows.
- The water shortage comes just months after the same region experienced widespread flooding as the Acre River overflowed its banks and forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes.
- Brazil as a whole is facing its worst dry spell in nearly a century, which is affecting water supplies for people, agriculture and electricity generation, and is part of a global pattern of increased water stress.
As populations grow, how will thirsty cities survive their drier futures?
- The world’s rapidly expanding cities are on a collision course with climate change, presenting unprecedented challenges to municipal and national governments as they work to continue providing residents with access to safe and sufficient water.
- Increasingly, calls are made to rethink the way we develop urban watersheds and the way we live in them — with water sourcing, transport, use and reuse planning key to the process. One approach, water-sensitive urban design (WSUD) entails a complete reimagining of the role and use of water in urban areas.
- WSUD embraces the water cycle, and considers the entire watershed where cities are located. It uses green infrastructure such as permeable pavements, green roofs and rain gardens, to greatly reduce stormwater runoff. Conscious design allows water to be recycled and reused repeatedly for various purposes. Waste is greatly reduced.
- Some cities are already changing their development pathways to be more resilient to inevitable future climate extremes, with Singapore and Cape Town leading the way. Future water stress can be overcome, but work needs to start now before extreme weather events, including mega droughts and floods, hit.
Coastal Indonesian village adapts to life amid rising tidal floodwaters
- Cars once drove along the road in front of residents’ homes in coastal Timbulsloko village on the northern coast of Indonesia’s Java Island. Now, only canoes can pass; when the tide recedes, the water is knee-deep.
- Timbulsloko experiences severe tidal flooding caused by land subsidence, abrasion, nearby major construction, and climate change.
- Residents are starting to respond: A network of interlocking boardwalks now connects the submerged hamlets to dry land, and the village has designated a protected coastal area and prohibited the clearing of mangroves.
- The goal is to prevent further coastal damage and ensure the safety of residents’ settlements. The community is also beginning to discuss sustainable aquaculture.
A world of hurt: 2021 climate disasters raise alarm over food security
- Human-driven climate change is fueling weather extremes — from record drought to massive floods — that are hammering key agricultural regions around the world.
- From the grain heartland of Argentina to the tomato belt of California to the pork hub of China, extreme weather events have driven down output and driven up global commodity prices.
- Shortages of water and food have, in turn, prompted political and social strife in 2021, including food protests in Iran and hunger in Madagascar, and threaten to bring escalating misery, civil unrest and war in coming years.
- Experts warn the problem will only intensify, even in regions currently unaffected by, or thriving from the high prices caused by scarcity. Global transformational change is urgently needed in agricultural production and consumption patterns, say experts.
Lessons from the 2021 Amazon flood (commentary)
- In June 2021, the annual flood season in the western and central Amazon reached record levels, and dramatic scenes of inundated homes, crops and city streets captured attention beyond Amazonia. This event provides lessons that must be learned.
- The high flood waters are explained by climatological forces that are expected to strengthen with projected global warming. Damaging floods represent just one of the predicted impacts in Amazônia under a warming climate.
- The administration of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro must change its current denialist positions on global warming and its policies that encourage deforestation. The Amazon forest must be maintained for many reasons in addition to its role in avoiding climate change.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Mining linked yet again to another severe flood in Indonesian Borneo
- Recent floods that hit the eastern part of Indonesia Borneo may have been exacerbated by massive deforestation for coal mines.
- There are as many as 94 coal-mining concessions in Berau district, which was hit by floodwaters as high as 2 meters (6.5 feet).
- Twenty of the concessions are located along the two rivers that overflowed during the floods.
- Illegal mining is also rampant in the area, and the police have launched an investigation to identify whether mining was a factor in exacerbating the scale of the flooding.
As climate change brings more floods, mosquito numbers could swell: Study
- Flooding boosts Aedes aegypti mosquito populations, a new study from Kenya has found.
- With a changing climate and extreme weather like floods expected to become more frequent and intense, this could mean more outbreaks of mosquito-borne disease such as dengue in the coming years.
- Dengue already afflicts millions of people every year, almost all of them in tropical countries, where the A. aegypti mosquito thrives.
- Though the new paper did not find a greater abundance of mosquitos leading to greater infection risk, the link between larger mosquito populations and disease outbreaks warrants further investigation, the authors said.
Mining sites in Indonesia’s disaster-prone areas a ticking time bomb: Report
- Nearly 800 mining concessions in Indonesia are located in areas prone to earthquakes, landslides and floods, a new report shows.
- Environmental activists say the proliferation of these concessions shows a lax attitude by companies and the government toward environmental risk assessment.
- They warn that mining activity in these areas could lead to disaster for local communities and the environment, including spills of toxic tailings and pollution of water sources.
- Communities living near many mining concessions have voiced their concerns over such risks.
Indonesian police may probe coal miners over deforestation-linked floods
- The Indonesian police say they might investigate coal companies for their alleged role in recent deadly floods that struck southern Borneo.
- Critics accuse the companies of degrading the water catchment in South Kalimantan province through deforestation and sedimentation, which they allege amplified the impact of the rain-fueled floods.
- The government, meanwhile, is under fire for issuing more permits than the previous three administrations.
- Activists warn the environmental degradation in the province will only get worse under a slate of controversial deregulation measures passed by the government last year, which they say caters to coal companies at the expense of the environment.
Researchers urge better protection as wetlands continue to vanish
- Wetlands provide many benefits to ecological and human communities alike, from nutrients and nurseries to flood control and climate change mitigation.
- However, as much as 87% of the world’s wetlands has been lost over the past 300 years, with much of this loss happening after 1900.
- In response, nations banded together and in 1971 ratified the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, an intergovernmental treaty designed to facilitate wetland conservation and sustainable use around the world.
- But 50 years on, researchers say the convention has not led to effective protection and wetlands continue to blink out.
Indonesia to push for mine rehab, reforestation after deadly floods
- The Indonesian government plans to reforest watershed areas in the Bornean province of South Kalimantan and compel coal-mining companies to rehabilitate their concessions there in response to recent deadly floods.
- Pit mines have degraded large swaths of the region’s watershed, undermining the ability of the land and rivers to absorb heavy rainwater runoff, which activists say exacerbated the scale of the floods.
- While the environment minister initially denied this, her office has now indicated it was aware of the problem at least five years earlier and will do more to get companies to rehabilitate their abandoned mining sites.
- Even if it succeeds, however, experts agree that, given the current state of technology, restoring forests from abandoned mining sites is unrealistic in any tangible time frame.
Plantations, mines didn’t worsen flood, Indonesia says. The data begs to differ
- Indonesia’s environment minister claims deforestation for oil palm plantations and coal mines had nothing to do with a recent deadly flood in southern Borneo.
- But the ministry’s own data, and statements by a senior minister, attribute the intensity of the flooding on the massive loss of forest cover across the Barito River’s watershed.
- Environmental activists say the deforestation has compromised the natural function of the watershed to absorb the heavy rains that caused the Barito and its tributaries to overflow following heavy rains.
- The coordinating minister for human development has called for a more sustainable management of natural resources in the region, warning against unbridled exploitation.
Palm oil plantations, coal mines linked to deadly Indonesia flood
- Environmentalists have attributed recent heavy floods in southern Indonesian Borneo to widespread deforestation for oil palm plantations and coal mines.
- An analysis by Indonesia’s space agency shows an area of forest twice the size of London was cleared in the past decade in the watershed area of the Barito River in South Kalimantan province.
- During the same period, plantations spanning twice the size of Los Angeles have been established in the watershed area.
- Activists have called for a sweeping review of licenses as well as rehabilitation of degraded areas in the region.
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.
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.
Oil palm plantations in Sumatran watershed worsen flooding in communities
- The development of oil palm and rubber plantations in a watershed area of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island is exacerbating flooding for nearby communities, new research suggests.
- The multidisciplinary study finds that soil compaction on land cleared for planting reduces the ground’s capacity to absorb rainwater, leading to surface runoff that leads to flooding.
- The researchers also interviewed people living nearby, who blamed the drainage channels and dams built for the plantations for channeling runoff to their areas.
- The researchers call for soil protection and improved land-use planning to reduce the incidence and severity of flooding.
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.
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.
As their land claim stalls, Brazil’s Munduruku face pressure from soybean farms
- Indigenous Munduruku communities in Brazil’s Pará state have seen their crops die as agribusiness expands in the area, with soybean farmers spraying pesticides less than 10 meters (33 feet) from villages.
- The streams used by the Munduruku have also been damaged, if not dried up, and even the artesian wells the communities are digging to survive appear to be contaminated.
- Aside from pesticides, soybean farming has also brought fraudulent requests for land appropriation and violence against indigenous people.
- The Munduruku have for the past 12 years tried to get their land demarcated as an indigenous reserve, but the process has stalled under the Bolsonaro administration.
Flooding devastates Ecuador’s indigenous communities in the Amazon
- Extreme floods in the Ecuadoran Amazon have left hundreds of indigenous people homeless.
- Such events have become more frequent, partly as a result of human-driven climate change.
- These communities have little to no access to basic services, which leaves them in an extremely vulnerable situation.
- Further complicating their plight is the global COVID-19 pandemic that has now made its way into Ecuador, one of the Latin American countries hit hardest by the coronavirus so far.
A watery onslaught from sea, sky and land in the world’s fastest-sinking city
- The Indonesian capital has 300 days of rain a year and 13 rivers running through it, so it doesn’t lack freshwater; but rampant development has left much of its area paved over, preventing this water from replenishing the aquifers.
- Instead, the water it gets — from rain and from rivers — often leads to flooding because it can’t be absorbed into the ground and can’t run out to sea.
- City authorities and planning experts agree that the extraction of water from the aquifers must end, but to do so will require providing universal access to clean water.
- Efforts are underway to clean up waterways, educate the public to not dump waste in rivers, and build infiltration wells that will allow the earth to once again capture rainwater.
US economy will take biggest hit if we continue with business as usual: report
- New research finds that if humans carry on with business as usual and the environmental degradation that results, we will pay a steep price — quite literally.
- Researchers found that if we simply continue under the status quo, the global economy will lose at least $479 billion a year, adding up to nearly $10 trillion in losses by 2050, as compared to the “baseline” scenario in which there is no change in ecosystem services over the next 30 years.
- Of the 140 countries included in the study, the United States stands to take the biggest economic hit, losing $83 billion per year by 2050 under this “business as usual” scenario that includes intense consumption of energy and raw materials, widespread land-use change, ongoing rises in greenhouse gas emissions, and continued loss of biodiversity.
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.
Uphill fight to shut disaster-amplifying gold mines in Indonesian park
- The Indonesian government has begun cracking down on illegal gold mines in a national park outside Jakarta blamed for exacerbating floods and landslides last month.
- But local authorities say it won’t be an easy task, with only 26 of out nearly 400 of the mines shut down so far.
- A day’s worth of mining can yield nearly the same pay as the monthly minimum wage, which officials say will continue to make it an attractive livelihood for many people.
- The environment ministry plans to reforest the degraded areas of the national park by planting 1.2 million trees by March.
Mining leads to flooding in Indonesia’s coal capital Samarinda
- Upstream coal-mining operations have contributed to severe flooding in the Indonesian Bornean city of Samarinda, officials and activists say.
- Deforestation caused by the mining has reduced the upstream area’s ability to absorb rainwater, resulting in greater volumes of runoff flowing into the Mahakam River and flooding the city.
- Tailings from the mines are also washing into the area’s rivers, silting them up and restricting their flow.
- Activists say much of the mining is illegal but has been ignored for years by city authorities.
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.
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.
The fight is on to save the last clean waterway in Brazil’s Manaus
- Jó Farah, president of Mata Viva, a local NGO, fights to save a stream called Água Branca, which means “white water,” that he says is the last clean waterway, or igarapé, in the city of Manaus, the capital of Brazil’s Amazonas state.
- Once used for leisure, navigation and fishing, almost all of the 150 igarapés in Manaus are totally polluted, with experts saying it could take up to 30 years for them to recover, while others are considered “dead.”
- Igarapés are important for natural drainage during rainy season, experts say. They warn the problems of flooding will only get worse over time, especially with climate change and related extreme weather conditions, if the issue not addressed properly.
Jakarta floods spark renewed calls for stronger environmental protection
- Environmental activists in Indonesia have renewed calls for the government to strengthen regulations to protect the environment following the recent massive flooding that hit the country’s capital and surrounding areas.
- Record rainfall and years of accumulated environmental degradation combined to create one of the deadliest floods in recent years in Jakarta.
- A group of lawyers and residents affected by the flooding say they plan to file a class-action lawsuit against the Jakarta administration for its negligence and inability to prevent and deal with the disaster.
- More heavy rains and strong winds are forecast to continue into mid-February, while authorities carry out cloud-seeding attempts to minimize rainfall hitting urban areas.
Environmental damage exacerbates Jakarta flooding amid record rainfall
- Record-breaking rainfall hit Jakarta and its satellite cities on New Year’s Eve, causing widespread flooding and leading to at least 19 deaths, authorities reported.
- Officials have attributed the severity of the disaster to years of environmental damage and waste dumping in the city’s rivers.
- The disaster has displaced more than 30,000 people, shut down an airport, and cut off some roads. More heavy rain is forecast through to next week.
Cambodian “bat man” bolsters the fight against dengue fever
- Rising temperatures due to climate change allow mosquitoes carrying deadly malaria and dengue fever to live in new parts of the world that were previously uninhabitable, placing over half the world’s population at risk.
- Creating artificial roosts for bats to “farm” their guano can improve soil quality, providing a natural fertilizer while reducing insect numbers, and possibly disease burdens.
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.
As hurricane season ends, now is the time to take local action to rebuild and recover (commentary)
- As the 2019 hurricane season comes to an end, now is the time to consider action on the local scale, in spite of the helplessness we may feel in the face of global change.
- It’s no coincidence that the islands most devastated by Hurricanes Matthew and Dorian were Grand Bahama, Abaco, Andros, and New Providence. Recently published coastal risk maps show these are the islands most exposed to flooding and erosion — which is critical information for recovery and rebuilding efforts.
- In our built world, we often forget about the natural defenses that kept us safe before we started tearing them down. Mangrove forests, coral reefs, and seagrass beds naturally envelop islands, weakening waves and storm surges. Protections are needed for coastal habitats that are still intact, and restoration is needed for degraded shorelines. As developed countries like the United States have learned, it costs millions of dollars more to restore natural defenses than to conserve them wisely in the first place.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
‘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.
As climate change disrupts the annual monsoon, India must prepare (Commentary)
- Over the past few decades, India’s total annual rainfall averages haven’t changed but the intensity of precipitation has increased as extreme weather events (EWEs) become more frequent and widespread. Today, the country witnesses more episodes of extremely heavy rainfall, as compared to the past’s consistent, well spread out seasonal rains.
- The nation’s meteorological department already admits that this is a clear impact of climate change. These intense storms pose a huge danger to India’s agriculture-based economy and to millions of farmers whose livelihoods still largely rely upon a consistent rainfall season. There are also periods of droughts interspersed with floods.
- The good news is that Indian authorities are aware of the change and are trying to tackle the impacts of shifting rainfall patterns and adapt to them.
- These extreme weather events are of global significance since more than 1.8 billion people live on the Indian subcontinent, and the impact in the South Asian region has economic fallout in other parts of the world. This post is a commentary. Views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Facing a possible Climate Apocalypse: How should we live? (commentary)
- We live today under threat of Climate Apocalypse. But two world wars, genocides, the Bomb and untold suffering around the globe reported daily have all perhaps dulled our senses and our resolve; resulted in elders – especially our leaders – failing to face humanity’s ultimate existential crisis.
- More than 30 years after the Climate Emergency was publicly declared by climatologist James Hansen, disasters multiply – record heat, drought, deluge, rising seas. But climate change deniers hold sway in the U.S. and abroad, with almost no nations on Earth on target to achieve their deeply inadequate Paris Agreement goals.
- Now an even higher imperative has emerged, as new studies point not just to escalating risk, but toward potential doom. Understandably, young people are angry and openly rebelling against their elders. The young point to a failure to act, and declare: there is no time for politics and business as usual. They’re right.
- Humanity’s only way out – the path to saving civilization, and much of life on Earth – is to act as though our lives, and our children’s lives, depend on it. Because they do. And one more thing: we mustn’t give up hope. This post is a commentary. Views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Climate adaptation begins with how we manage water (commentary)
- Some 70 percent of the world’s freshwater is used for agriculture, but cities and other sectors have growing demands on the same water resources. To adapt to climate change without undermining food security and farmers’ livelihoods, we will have to fundamentally rethink agricultural water usage, our food systems, and our diets.
- A major new report from the Global Commission on Adaptation (GCA) makes this case loud and clear. The report urges us to face the fact that climate change will require ‘massive’ adaptation. It urges us to meet this challenge with urgency and resolve.
- The GCA report paints a sobering picture of our water and food security futures. We can and must adapt more quickly and effectively. Adaptive water management is an important place to start.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Indonesian flooding disaster bears the hallmarks of agriculture and mining impacts
- Last June, North Konawe, a land of hills and valleys on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, was struck by devastating floods, displacing thousands of people.
- In the wake of the disaster, a public debate has ensued over the cause. Some government agencies have concluded that deforestation by plantation and mining companies exacerbated the floods.
- Some villages, including the riverside community of Tapuwatu, were almost completely washed away.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
‘Nothing was left’: Flash floods, landslides hit Indonesia’s Papua region
- Flash floods and landslides triggered by torrential rain hit Indonesia’s Cyclops Mountains in Papua province on March 17, killing nearly 90 people and displacing thousands.
- The country’s disaster mitigation agency has cited human-caused deforestation as contributing to the scale of the damage.
- Indonesia’s environment ministry has called for a review of zoning plans for the housing settlements around the Cyclops Mountains, but denies that massive logging has occurred in the area.
Putting the Blue in the Green New Deal (commentary)
- The Green New Deal (GND) is a U.S. resolution that aims to address economic inequality and global warming through a set of proposed economic stimulus projects.
- As nearly half of the U.S. populace lives in or near coastal areas, the GND needs to prioritize the sustainable use and preservation of the marine environment – called the “blue economy.”
- David Helvarg of Blue Frontier and Jason Scorse of the International Environmental Policy Program and the Middlebury Institute of International Studies suggest a series of policy and investment priorities for incorporation of the blue economy into the GND.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
The hidden costs of hydro: We need to reconsider world’s dam plans
- As thousands of hydroelectric dams are planned worldwide, including 147 in the Amazon, a new study finds that the true socio-environmental and cultural costs of dams are rarely evaluated before construction. Were such factors counted into the lifetime cost of the dams, many would not be built.
- Dam repairs and removal at the end of a project’s life are rarely figured into upfront costs. Nor are impacts on river flow reduction, loss of fisheries, and aquatic habitat connectivity, destruction of productive farmlands drowned by reservoirs, and the displacement of riverine peoples.
- Lack of transparency and corruption between government and dam construction companies is at the heart of the problem preventing change. Researchers recommend that environmental impact assessments (EIAs) and social impact assessments (SIAs) be granted enough weight so that if they turn out negatively it will prevent a bad dam from being built.
- EIAs and SIAs should be done by third parties serving citizens, not the dam company. Better governance surrounding dams needs to be organized and implemented. There needs to be increased transparency about the true financial, social, cultural and environmental costs of dams to the public. Maintaining river flows and fish migrations is also critical.
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.
Environmental degradation exacerbates Indonesia flooding, landslides
- Days of torrential rains in Indonesia’s South Sulawesi province killed scores of people and forced thousands to flee their homes.
- Local authorities and activists have blamed the degraded condition of the region’s rivers and watershed for amplifying the scale of the disaster.
- Upstream mining and forest clearing for farms are believed to have severely silted up the region’s rivers, rendering them prone to spilling over during heavy rains.
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.
Rhinos or roads? Nepal deals with a tricky balancing act
- Nepal’s Chitwan National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is home to the world’s second largest population of greater one-horned rhinos, as well as nearly 100 Bengal tigers and more than 54 other mammal species.
- After a 2016 mission, UNESCO warned that Chitwan could be placed on the World Heritage in Danger list if a number of planned infrastructure projects were completed as proposed.
- Since then, the largest projects have been suspended or rerouted; now, conservationists say they are more concerned by the impacts of unplanned urbanization and local flood-control projects.
- Local officials often struggle to balance protecting Chitwan’s ecosystem against the popular demand for infrastructure development projects.
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.
Research links specific 2017 extreme weather events to climate change
- According to the seventh annual special report by the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS) probing the causal links between rising global temperatures and extreme weather events, issued last month, climate change made the Northern Great Plains drought of 2017 some 1.5 times more likely and greatly enhanced its intensity by driving long-term reductions in soil moisture.
- For the second year in a row, scientists were able to identify specific extreme weather events that cannot be explained without factoring in Earth’s warming global climate.
- A team of 120 scientists from 10 different countries used historical observations and model simulations to produce the 17 peer-reviewed analyses collected in the BAMS special report examining extraordinary weather events from around the globe that were made more likely or exacerbated by anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change.
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.
Amazon forests not changing fast enough to keep up with climate change: study
- Researchers analyzed three decades of Amazon basin data collected by a long-term international collaboration known as RAINFOR which individually monitors each tree in hundreds of forest plots across the region.
- They found that over the past 30 years water-loving plants in the most drought-prone regions have been slowly replaced by trees that are better adapted to drier weather.
- Of concern: these changes in tree composition lag about two orders of magnitude behind the change in climate. This suggests that the Amazon rainforest may struggle to adapt, and keep up with, ongoing, escalating shifts in climate.
- In addition, some areas are seeing more drought, and more floods, creating multiple stressors. If the Amazon is to adapt to rapid climatic shifts, then forest fragmentation must be limited to allow species movement. However, croplands and pastures are shattering habitat connectivity, especially in the southern Amazon.
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.
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.
Extreme floods on the rise in the Amazon: study
- Scientists and the media have documented deepening drought in the Amazon basin. But a new study finds that flood events are significantly intensifying too, becoming five times more common over the last century.
- The effect is caused by a combination of factors, including an increase in strength of the Walker circulation – an ocean-driven pattern of air circulation that carries warm moist air from the tropical Atlantic across South America towards the Pacific, resulting in Amazon precipitation.
- Human-driven climate change is a major contributing factor to this increased Amazon basin flooding. Intensifying flood events result in lives and property lost, and significant harm to croplands, pastures and livestock.
- A better understanding of flood and drought dynamics, and better predictability due partly to this study, could help reduce this damage. How escalating changes in precipitation occurrence and intensity might be altering Amazon flora and fauna is uncertain, though new research shows that tree species composition is altering.
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.
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.
Ongoing rise in sea levels will increase threats to World Heritage Sites
- New research finds that rising sea levels due to climate change will put dozens of World Heritage Sites in the Mediterranean region at increased risk of flooding and erosion — threats many of the sites are already facing.
- 47 of the 49 cultural World Heritage Sites studied were found to be potentially threatened by coastal erosion or storm surges by the end of the century.
- The study also showed that 93 percent of the sites at risk from a 100-year flooding and 91 percent of the sites at risk from coastal erosion are already at risk under current conditions, “which stresses the urgency of adaptation in these locations,” according to the researchers.
Global warming, human activities causing increased storm runoff, flash floods
- A new study published in the journal Nature Communications this week looks at how storm runoff levels might respond to future changes in surface temperature and atmospheric moisture content driven by both natural causes and human activities.
- The research team behind the study, led by Pierre Gentine, an associate professor of earth and environmental engineering at Columbia University in New York City, says that there’s is the first global analysis to show that storm runoff extremes are rising sharply in response to climate and human-induced changes — and that the magnitude of storm runoff is likely to continue increasing in most regions at rates substantially higher than projected by previous climate models.
- Gentile and team argue that there is “an urgent need” to increase human society’s resilience to both climate change and the changing environment, because storm runoff extremes are intensifying as the world warms and our existing infrastructure systems may not be able to cope.
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.
New flash-flood warning system in India could be life-saving
- To improve preparedness for flash floods, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) is working on a guidance system that will predict the possibility of flash floods up to six hours in advance and alert disaster relief forces as well as residents.
- The Flash Flood Guidance System (FFGS) will use existing satellites and on-ground equipment to track real-time rainfall in any part of the country.
- Since the soil’s ability to absorb rainwater influences the probability of flash floods, the early-warning system will use data like soil moisture, temperature, saturation, and the topography of the land, to assess the likelihood of flash floods ahead of time.
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.
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.
Study reveals China’s new forests aren’t really forests
- In the late 1990s, China instituted ambitious reforestation policies to mitigate flooding disasters.
- By 2013, these policies had convinced famers to plant more than 69.2 million acres of trees on what once was cropland and scrubland. By 2015, China’s tree cover had increased by 32 percent.
- But a recently published study reveals most reforestation efforts simply planted one tree species, making a plot of reforested land ecologically akin to a monoculture plantation.
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.
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.
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.
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.
NGOs denounce Tapajós basin intimidation, violence, Brazil inaction
- Thirty-eight national and international civil society organizations (CSOs), including social movements and NGOs, have condemned the Brazilian government and the builders of four Teles Pires River dams in the Amazon. The groups denounce the dam consortium for acts of intimidation against indigenous groups, especially involving the newly built São Manoel dam.
- This dam was built by the Sao Manoel Energy Consortium, headed by the Brazilian subsidiaries of China Three Gorges Corporation, Energia de Portugal, and state company Furnas. The CSOs/NGOs say the Temer government sent in a national police unit as a “private security firm” to defend the dam builders and intimidate indigenous groups.
- The CSOs/NGOs also say the government is in violation of numerous laws regarding the São Manoel dam, including a failure to properly consult with indigenous communities, threats made to those groups, incomplete environmental impact studies, and failure to implement agreed to “conditions” made by authorities in return for dam authorization.
- Elsewhere, riverside communities on the Tapajós River, frustrated with government delays to meet a legal obligation to demarcate their lands, took action to mark the borders themselves. Illegal loggers and miners responded with threats of violence. The Brazilian government has done nothing so far to protect these traditional communities.
Small hydropower a big global issue overlooked by science and policy
- Brazil recently announced an end to its mega-dam construction policy, a strategy other nations may embrace as understanding of the massive environmental and social impacts of big dams grows.
- However, a trend long neglected by scientists and policymakers ¬ the rapid growth of small dams – has been spotlighted in a new study.
- Nearly 83,000 small dams in 150 nations (with 11 small dams for each large dam), exist globally, while that number could triple if all capacity worldwide is used. More than 10,000 new small dams are already in the planning stages. But small dam impacts have been little studied by scientists, and little regulated by governments.
- Environmentalists say that, with the rapid construction of new small dams, it is urgent for researchers to assess the impacts of different types of small dams, as well as looking at the cumulative impacts of many small dams placed on a single river, or on main stems and tributaries within watersheds.
Andes dams twice as numerous as thought are fragmenting the Amazon
- A new study identified 142 dams currently in operation or under construction in the Andes headwaters of the Amazon, twice the number previously estimated. An additional 160 are in the planning stages.
- If proposed Andes dams go ahead, sediment transport to the Amazon floodplains could cease, blocking freshwater fish migratory routes, disrupting flow and flood regimes, and threatening food security for downstream communities, impacting up to 30 million people.
- Most dams to date are on the tributary networks of Andean river main stems. But new dams are planned for five out of eight major Andean Amazon main stems, bringing connectivity reductions on the Marañón, Ucayali and Beni rivers of more than 50 percent; and on the Madre de Dios and Mamoré rivers of over 35 percent.
- Researchers conclude that proposed dams should be required to complete cumulative effects assessments at a basin-wide scale, and account for synergistic impacts of existing dams, utilizing the UN Watercourses Convention as a legal basis for international cooperation for sustainable water management between Amazon nations.
Norsk Hydro accused of Amazon toxic spill, admits ‘clandestine pipeline’
- Norsk Hydro’s Alunorte aluminum refining facility in Barcarena municipality, Pará state, has been accused by Brazilian authorities of contaminating the local waters of several communities with toxic waste that overflowed earlier this month from a holding basin.
- The firm denied the allegation, but has agreed to provide water to local residents, and is investigating.
- The government also accused the company of having a “clandestine pipeline to discharge untreated effluent,” an allegation that the Norwegian state firm has since admitted to being true.
- Officials have yet to determine the full cause, scope or consequence of the spill, while locals complain that this isn’t the first time. According to IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental agency, Norsk Hydro has not paid fines set at R $17 million to date (US $5.27 million), after a toxic overflow in 2009 put the local Barcarena population at risk.
Belo Monte legacy: harm from Amazon dam didn’t end with construction (photo story)
- The controversial Belo Monte dam, operational in 2016 and the world’s third biggest, was forced on the people of Altamira, Pará state, and is now believed to have been built largely as payback to Brazil’s construction industry by the nation’s then ruling Workers’ Party for campaign contributions received.
- The dam was opposed by an alliance of indigenous and traditional communities, and international environmentalists, all to no avail. Today, the media coverage that once turned the world’s eyes toward Belo Monte, has gone away. But that hasn’t ended the suffering and harm resulting from the project.
- Tens of thousands of indigenous and traditional people were forced from their homes, and had to give up their fishing livelihoods. Meanwhile, the city of Altamira endured boom and bust, as workers flooded in, then abandoned it. The Belo Sun goldmine, if ever built, also continues to be a potential threat.
- In this story, Mongabay contributor Maximo Anderson and photographer Aaron Vincent Elkaim document the ongoing harm being done by the giant dam. Belo Monte, today, stands as a warning regarding the urgent need to properly assess and plan for mega-infrastructure projects in Amazonia.
‘Adaptation Bangladesh: Sea Level Rise’ film shows how farmers are fighting climate change
- A recent documentary looks at how Bangladeshi farmers are adapting to rising sea levels.
- The film documents how Bangladeshi farmers are keeping their farms from flooding by building floating gardens made of water hyacinth and bamboo.
- The film won the Best Short Film at the New York WILD Film Festival, which begins on Feb. 22.
- Mongabay interviewed cultural anthropologist Alizé Carrère to learn more about why she chose to focus on Bangladesh and why this story is important.
David Suzuki on why indigenous knowledge is critical for human survival
- On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast we feature a conversation with iconic Canadian scientist, author, television presenter, and activist David Suzuki.
- Mongabay interviewed Suzuki last year about the Blue Dot Movement, which aims to enshrine the right to a healthy environment in the Canadian Constitution, and we thought now, at the start of 2018, would be a great time to check in with him about what progress has been made.
- Suzuki also discusses the environmental issues he thinks are most pressing as we forge ahead into the new year and his plans to convene a gathering of First Nations keepers of traditional ecological knowledge with Western scientists.
A tale of two policies: climate change, Trump, and the U.S. military
- The U.S. military is preparing for a changing climate, but not in order to protect the Earth’s environment. The Pentagon’s first and foremost concern is to respond to global warming only in so far as that response enhances the military’s “operational effectiveness” – its ability to fight.
- Jim Mattis, President Trump’s own Secretary of Defense, has spoken out about the dangers of climate change, running contrary to the commander-in-chief whose recently announced National Security Strategy omitted it as a threat. Analysts expect the military to continue with its climate change adaptation and preparedness programs, despite the President’s denialism.
- However, even as the U.S. military takes steps to make itself more fuel and energy efficient, the Department of Defense remains the world’s largest institutional fossil fuel guzzler.
- Critics say the greening of the military is positive, but not if its growth comes at the expense of U.S. climate programs at EPA and the State Department. Big increases in the military’s size, pushed by Trump and Congress, are only going to make the Pentagon’s and the world’s carbon emissions worse – which could ultimately impact national security and “operational effectiveness.”
Study: Amazon dams are disrupting ecologically vital flood pulses
- Flood pulses are critical to the way the Amazon, its tributaries and other tropical rivers function – and these seasonal flood pulses are a huge driver of ecological productivity and diversity.
- Floodplain forests depend upon annual flood pulses to bring nutrients and sediment from river channels out into the surrounding terrestrial habitat.
- Reductions to flood pulses, brought by Amazon dams both large and small, could lead to shifts in tree species diversity and composition, with implications for carbon storage and emissions.
- Unreliable flood regimes, as created by dams of all sizes, significantly impact Amazon river systems and species’ life cycles, population dynamics, food sources, and habitats above and below the water line.
Brazil 2018: Amazon under attack, resistance grows, courts to act, elections
- While forecasts are always difficult, it seems likely that Brazilian President Michel Temer will remain in power for the last year of his term, despite on-going corruption investigations.
- Elections for president, the house of deputies, and most of the senate are scheduled for October. Former President Lula has led the presidential polls, though right wing candidate Jair Bolsonaro has grown strong. Lula’s environmental record is mixed; Bolsonaro would almost certainly be bad news for the environment, indigenous groups and the Amazon.
- During 2018, Temer, Congress and the bancada ruralista (a lobby representing agribusiness, cattle ranchers, land thieves and other wealthy rural elites) will likely seek to undermine environmental laws and indigenous land rights further. Potential paving of the BR 319 in the heart of the Amazon is considered one of the biggest threats.
- However, grassroots environmental and indigenous resistance continues to grow, and important Brazilian Supreme Court decisions are expected in the weeks and months ahead, which could undo some of the major gains made by the ruralists under Temer.
Brazil announces end to Amazon mega-dam building policy
- Brazil’s government this week announced a major shift away from its policy of building mega-dams in the Brazilian Amazon – a strategy born during the country’s military dictatorship (1964-1985) and vigorously carried forward down to the present day.
- The Temer government claims the decision is a response to intense resistance from environmentalists and indigenous groups, but while that may be part of the reason, experts see other causes as well.
- The decline in political influence of Brazil’s gigantic construction companies caused by the Lava Jato (Car Wash) corruption investigation is likely a major cause of the change in policy. So is the current depressed state of Brazil’s economy, which makes it unlikely that Brazil’s huge development bank (BNDES) will invest in such multi-billion dollar projects.
- While environmentalists and indigenous groups will likely celebrate the shift away from the mega-dam policy, experts warn that many threats to the Amazon remain, including pressure by Brazil’s ruralist lobby to open up conserved areas and indigenous lands to agribusiness, along with threats posed by new road, rail, waterway and mining projects.
Scientists say some climate change impacts already unavoidable, but worst can still be averted
- Researchers at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology recently looked at how the Brahmaputra River’s annual flood cycles will be impacted by global warming and determined that the more the world warms, the more common and severe Brahmaputra floods will become.
- The study was carried out as part of the HELIX project, which involves more than 50 scientists from 16 institutions in 13 countries who have spent the past four years examining the potential impacts of global temperatures rising an average of 1.5°C, 2°C, 4°C, and 6°C compared to pre-industrial levels.
- According to HELIX researchers, global temperatures have already risen about 1°C, and at least another 0.5°C of warming is likely given the amount of greenhouse gases we’ve already pumped into Earth’s atmosphere. That means that, even if we do manage to rapidly decarbonize the global economy, some impacts of climate change are probably still unavoidable.
Amazon dam impacts underestimated due to overlooked vine growth: study
- New research on the rapid growth of lianas – native woody vines – on the artificial reservoir islands of the Balbina dam in the Amazon finds that forest communities there underwent a transformation as a result of severe habitat fragmentation, resulting in the altering of the carbon sequestration and emission balance.
- Some tree species are severely impacted by this extreme form of habitat fragmentation and die, while native lianas — woody vines that climb to reach the forest canopy — thrive and rapidly fill the biological niche left by failing trees.
- Trees, with their greater biomass, store more carbon in trunks and branches than lianas, so the carbon balance shifts as lianas dominate. Rather than sequestering carbon, these dam-created islands end up emitting carbon as the trees die.
- The rapid growth of lianas further contributes to the degradation of remnant tree communities challenged by fragmentation. Amazon dam environmental impact assessments don’t currently evaluate increased reservoir island carbon emissions.
Extreme seasonal changes in Amazon river levels threaten forest conservation by indigenous people
- The Amazon has experienced intense floods and droughts for the past 10 years, a likely effect of climate change.
- Surveys taken of animals between 2009 and 2015 showed terrestrial mammal populations dropped by 95 percent during intense floods, whereas aquatic animals suffered dramatic declines during an extreme drought.
- Scientists fear these seasonal extremes will drive the Cocama people of Peru out of the forest, depriving it of its primary conservationists.
Indonesians race to save their disappearing lakes, before it’s too late
- Seventeen lakes in the Southeast Asian nation are in “critical” condition. One of them, Lake Limboto in northern Sulawesi, is shrinking rapidly and could disappear by 2025.
- Recently, government officials and researchers from across Indonesia gathered on Lake Limboto’s shores, declaring that a national agency should be established to handle the issue. In December they will meet again, hoping to attract the attention of President Joko Widodo.
- One of the most pressing problems at Limboto is the lake’s shrinking increases the risk of flooding in nearby Gorontalo city.
Damming or damning the Amazon: Assessing Ecuador / China cooperation
- In 2008, Ecuador, led by President Rafael Correa, approved a new constitution based upon Buen Vivir (the ”Good Life”), committing the nation to indigenous rights, environmental sustainability and state sovereignty. However, Correa quickly aligned the nation with China, a partnership that many critics say undermined the promises of the constitution.
- Under Correa, China became Ecuador’s primary creditor and Chinese investment, both public and private, resulted in an infrastructure boom in new dams, mines, oilrigs, roads, power transmission lines, telecommunications systems and schools.
- During Correa’s administration, eight major dams were built, including Coca Coda Sinclair (CCS) constructed by Chinese state corporation Sinohydro. While CCS promised local prosperity, residents of surrounding communities say the government provided them with no say in the project, which has created serious environmental problems.
- In May, a new president, Lenin Moreno, was elected. He has so far not followed in Correa’s footsteps, and his administration seems set on deemphasizing the relationship with China, with few major infrastructure projects currently in the works. However a power struggle in the ruling Alianza País Party has made Ecuador’s political path forward less than clear.
Mining activity causing nearly 10 percent of Amazon deforestation
- Scientists have learned that nearly 10 percent of the deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon between 2005 and 2015 was due to mining activities. Previously, it was thought to cause just 1-2 percent, but that is because past assessments primarily looked at deforestation caused by the mines themselves, and didn’t account for all the ancillary infrastructure that accompanies the mines.
- With mining causing such high levels of deforestation — up to 70 kilometers away from mines — and with the Brazilian government under Michel Temer eager to open vast areas of the Amazon to mining, the researchers say that companies and government need to aggressively address the deforestation issue.
- While the new research documented Amazon deforestation due to many ancillary activities, including roads, staff housing and airports, it did not look into the major deforestation brought by
the new hydroelectric dams that often provide energy for mining operations
- To address the high level of deforestation caused by mining in the Amazon, Brazil needs to significantly revise its environmental impact assessment process to include ancillary infrastructure up to 70 kilometers away from mines along with related hydroelectric dam construction.
Amazonian manatee migration at risk from disruption by proposed dams
- Amazonian manatees (Trichechus inunguis) spend the high-water season feeding in flooded forests, but migrate to deeper permanent water bodies to see out the dry season.
- Researchers have found that as the dry season approaches, manatees time their migration out of the floodplain to avoid bottlenecks that would block their route, and doom them.
- But, the scientists warn, those bottlenecks will become far more common, and less predictable, if the hundreds of hydropower dams planned for the Amazon go forward.
- The dams, and the bottleneck problem they create, “generates profound concern for the conservation of manatees,” the scientists write.
Munduruku standoff against Amazon dam builders potentially explosive
- On 13 October, eighty Munduruku warriors and shamans tried to occupy the São Manoel dam on the Teles Pires River in one of the most remote parts of the Amazon. But the government and construction companies had been tipped off in advance.
- Thirty armed Public Security National Force police had been flown in and blocked them from entering the site. The Munduruku were met by teargas and flash bombs. They have since left the immediate vicinity, but their demands remain unresolved.
- The Munduruku say that the construction firms, to end a July occupation of the dam, had agreed to a September meeting and to apologize for the destruction of two of their most sacred sites — one of them the equivalent of Christian Heaven — and to apologize for collecting and storing sacred urns without proper rituals.
- According to the Indians, the performance of these apology rituals is now vital to the survival of the Munduruku as a people, and to the survival of the Amazon itself, but the companies remain adamant in their denial of wrongdoing. Tensions remain high, and many fear more violence could erupt.
Indigenous group scores legal victory as dam floods their lands
- A brief legal battle related to the Barro Blanco hydroelectric project in western Panama concluded late last month in a rare triumph for indigenous communities who have opposed the dam’s construction for a decade.
- The dam’s construction company had accused three Ngäbe-Bugle leaders of instigating project delays and causing financial losses during protests at Barro Blanco’s entrance in July 2015. On September 20, a judge acquitted all three defendants of any wrongdoing.
- Nevertheless, the dam is now fully operational and its reservoir has flooded the land of three Ngäbe-Bugle communities.
- Leadership of the Ngäbe-Bugle is deeply divided between members who support the dam and those who oppose it, claiming that they had not been adequately consulted prior to the dam’s approval.
Amazon community on Tapajós River invaded by wildcat miners
- The Brazilian community of Montanha-Mangabal made up of beiradeiros —riverside peasant farmers and traditional fishermen — has been invaded and threatened by angry wildcat miners.
- The beiradeiros community spread for miles along the Tapajós River in Pará, worked for decades to establish its legal land rights, achieved in 2013 when Brazil’s National Colonization and Agrarian Reform Institute (INCRA) turned the land into a 550 square kilometer Agro-Extractive Settlement (PAE).
- However, the federal government failed to meet its obligation to demarcate the land. As a measure of last resort, Montanha-Mangabal and Munduruku indigenous allies began marking the land’s boundaries in September using GPS and signs.
- This self-demarcation process apparently led to the miners’ invasion, as they illegitimately claim some of the community’s land. The beiradeiros, Munduruku, and other indigenous groups see the invasion as part of a bigger threat by Brazilian ruralists and the government to develop the Amazon.
Andes dams could threaten food security for millions in Amazon basin
- More than 275 hydroelectric projects are planned for the Amazon basin, the majority of which could be constructed in the Andes whose rivers supply over 90 percent of the basin’s sediments and over half its nutrients.
- A new study projects huge environmental costs for six of these dams, which together will retain 900 million tons of river sediment annually, reducing supplies of phosphorus and nitrogen, and threatening fish populations and soil quality downstream.
- Accumulating sediments upstream of dams are projected to release 10 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year, significantly contributing to global warming, and would contaminate waters and the aquatic life they support with mercury.
- The construction of these dams should be reconsidered to preserve food security and the livelihoods of millions of people in the Amazon Basin.
Belo Monte dam installation license suspended, housing inadequacy cited
- A federal court has suspended the installation license of the Belo Monte mega-dam in the state of Pará, Brazil. The dam, slated to have the world’s third-largest generating capacity, became operational in 2015, but won’t see construction finished until 2019.
- The court ordered further construction halted until Norte Energia met the commitments it made in 2011 to provide adequate housing for those displaced by the dam, including indigenous and traditional people that had been living along the Xingu River.
- Among commitment violations cited were houses built without space for larger families, houses built from different materials than promised, and homes constructed too far from work, schools and shopping in Altamira, a city lacking a robust public transportation system.
- The consortium continues to operate the dam, as its operating license has not been suspended.
Transformance: Finding common ground in the Amazon (commentary)
- The Fórum Bem Viver (Good Life Forum) met earlier this month to bring together indigenous leaders, military police, a federal judge, television actors, musicians, journalists, scientists and activists from eight countries and 14 Brazilian states.
- The event, organized by the eco-cultural education nonprofit Rios de Encontro, utilized arts performances and workshops to seek common ground between participants regarding sustainable solutions in the Amazon.
- The event was held in Marabá, Pará state, which is home to the Carajás mine, the world’s largest iron ore mine, and the community sits beside the Tocantins River where a dam is proposed upstream.
- Participants sought solutions for turning Marabá into an “example of sustainable development for the Amazon, the Americas, and the world.” This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
New study: Climate change shifts timing of floods in Europe
- A team of 46 scientists analyzed five decades of data on river flooding in Europe, leading to the strongest evidence yet that climate change affects this important natural process.
- In northeastern Europe, where rising temperatures have accelerated snowmelt, the team found earlier flooding at more than 80 percent of the data collection locations.
- Across the rest of the continent, the impacts of climate change were less direct.
- In some places, such as the Atlantic coast, the researchers found a shift toward earlier flooding. Some parts of Europe near the Mediterranean Sea experienced flooding later in the year.
Brazilian firm wants to build new dams in Amazon’s Aripuanã basin
- With the bancada ruralista mining / agribusiness lobby in control of the Temer government and Congress, a Brazilian company, Intertechne Consultores, sees it as an opportune time to revive a shelved plan to build dams in the Amazon’s Aripuanã basin.
- The company has asked federal officials to allow viability studies for 3 new dams in this very remote, biodiverse region — the Sumaúma and Quebra Remo dams on the Aripuanã River, and the Inferninho dam on its tributary, the Roosevelt River.
- The Inferninho dam, if built, would highly impact the Cinta Larga Indians, the victims of Brazilian-inflicted genocide in the 1960s. The Roosevelt Indigenous Reserve contains one of the world’s five largest diamond reserves, a cause of past violent conflicts.
- Moves may be afoot in Congress to end a ban of mining on indigenous lands. If passed, a new law could allow mining on Cinta Larga land, with new mines potentially powered by the new hydroelectric dams. These projects, if built, would likely be a source of intense new controversy and conflict in the Amazon.
HydroCalculator: new, free, online tool helps citizens assess dams
- With mega-dams planned globally, especially in the Amazon and Mekong, the Conservation Strategy Fund (CSF), an NGO, has developed a new free tool for evaluating a planned dam’s economic viability, greenhouse gas emissions and more.
- The HydroCalculator estimates the net economic value of a proposed dam, with and without the cost of greenhouse gas emissions factored in, number of years required before a project generates a profit, and years until net emissions become negative.
- The tool has been used by CSF, International Rivers, and a development bank and found to be very useful. Its forecasts have been tested against the economic viability and carbon emissions of existing dams, and found accurate.
- The HydroCalculator is meant for use by communities, researchers and activists who are often closed out of the technical dam planning process. It is available free online.
Flood hits India’s Kaziranga National Park, killing four rhinos
- Annual monsoon floods are a natural part of Kaziranga National Park’s ecosystem but pose multiple threats to animals, including the risk of drowning or getting poached or hit by cars while fleeing rising water.
- According to officials, 81 animals have been killed in this year’s flood, including four rhinos. Another 78 animals have been stranded or injured.
- Mitigation measures include increased monitoring by rangers, police and drones; closely tracking the speed of vehicles through the park; and the construction of artificial highlands.
- Authorities are also considering a controversial proposal to build a road-cum-embankment to prevent floodwaters from inundating the park.
Amazon infrastructure EIAs under-assess biodiversity; scientists offer solutions
- In a new paper, scientists assert that environmental impact assessments (EIAs) for major Brazilian Amazon infrastructure projects often fail in their performance of comprehensive biodiversity evaluations, so underestimate ecosystem risk.
- Their proposed solution is the development and use within EIAs of multiple, complementary scientific methods they say would be cost effective, and make more comprehensive biodiversity assessments possible.
- These methods include satellite imaging, near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy, and DNA metabarcoding to detect a wider range of species. The scientists propose these methods be implemented to improve pre-construction biodiversity surveys and EIAs.
- A major concern by researchers is that Brazil’s Congress is currently considering legislation that would do away with the existing environmental licensing process, and reduce or eliminate existing EIA requirements.
Study: Brazilian mega-dams caused far more flooding than EIA predicted
- A satellite study of the Santo Antônio and Jirau dams in the Amazon found the area flooded by their reservoirs to be much greater than projected by the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) done as part of the Brazilian dams’ licensing process.
- Satellite images from 2006-2015 were analyzed, spanning the time immediately before, during, and after dam construction, and then these images were compared with the flooding predictions found in the EIA.
- The total flooded area upstream of the dams was found to be 69.8 percent larger than projected by the EIA. The area of natural forest flooded exceeded EIA predictions by 52 percent.
- Political considerations likely influenced the EIAs gross inaccuracy, with real world results. In 2014, Madeira River floods upriver from the dams impacted 75,000 people, killed a quarter-million livestock and caused over US $180 million in damage.
Unexamined synergies: dam building and mining go together in the Amazon
- 40 large hydroelectric dams are slated for the Amazon basin over the next 20 years, feeding the massive electricity needs of an energy-hungry mining industry — digging, processing and exporting iron, aluminum, manganese and gold.
- But mining’s energy needs are rarely linked to plans for new dams or their environmental impact assessments. Amazon mining and dam building have repeatedly in the past resulted in major harmful environmental and social impacts, including displacement of indigenous and traditional communities.
- Transnational mining companies and consortiums are major beneficiaries of government largesse through subsidies, tax breaks and the energy obtained from newly commissioned Amazon dams.
- Brazilian infrastructure development in the Amazon, including dam building and mining, could — if environmental and social issues are not properly addressed — turn the Amazon into a national sacrifice zone where biological and cultural diversity are drastically diminished.
International action a must to stop irreversible harm of Amazon dams, say experts
- A study, published in Nature and led by Edgardo Latrubesse of the University of Texas at Austin, went beyond local impacts of individual dams to assess cumulative, basin-wide impacts that planned dams are bringing to 19 major Amazon sub-basins.
- The team developed a new metric: the Dam Environmental Vulnerability Index (DEVI) which includes assessments of basin integrity (vulnerability to land use change and erosion, etc.); fluvial dynamics (influence of sediment fluxes and flood pulses); and the extent of the river affected by dams.
- A score for each sub-basin from 0-100 was assigned, with higher values indicating greater vulnerability. The Madeira, Ucayali, Marañon and Tapajós sub-basins were found to be most threatened; all had DEVI totals higher than 60.
- The researchers say that a collective, cooperative, multi-country Amazon region assessment of dams and their cumulative impacts is urgently needed to get a handle on the true magnitude of the threat to the Amazon, as well as means to a solution.
A stubborn dreamer who fought to save Amazon’s Waimiri-Atroari passes
- As a young man in the 1960s, José Porfirio Fontenele de Carvalho decided to resist Brazil’s brutal military dictatorship by going into the Amazon to help indigenous groups in their struggles against the military’s assault on their way of life.
- He made early contact with the warlike Waimiri-Atroari Indians, who were decimated in their struggle to block the BR-174 highway through their territory. The Indians tell of numerous atrocities committed against them by the government during this period.
- With Carvalho’s help, a new indigenous reserve, covering 2.6 million hectares (10,000 square miles), was established, along with a conservation unit — the Biological Reserve of Uatumã. Through the years, Carvalho won other concessions for the Waimiri-Atroari.
- Today, the group has increased its number to nearly 2,000, though the tribe continues fighting the government. President Temer is now determined to put a major transmission line through their lands. Most observers agree: without Carvalho’s assist, the Waimiri-Atroari would likely be extinct, and their forests gone. He died this month at age 70.
Amazon’s fate hangs on outcome of war between opposing worldviews
- The battle for the Amazon is being fought over two opposing viewpoints: the first, mostly held by indigenous and traditional people and their conservationist allies, sees forests and rivers as valuable for their own sake, and for the livelihoods, biodiversity, ecological services and climate change mitigation they provide. For them the forests need protection.
- The second worldview holds that Amazon forests are natural resources to be harvested and turned into dollars, an outlook largely held by wealthy landowners, land thieves, loggers, cattle ranchers and farmers. For them the forests are there to be cut down, and the land is there to be used for economic benefit.
- The bancada ruralista agribusiness lobby now has overwhelming political power in the Brazilian Congress and the Temer administration, which are pushing a raft of bills and administrative actions to take away indigenous land rights, dismember conservation units, gut environmental licensing laws and defund environmental protection agencies.
- The great fear is that the collision of the two worldviews in the wilds of the Amazon will result in escalating lawlessness and bloodshed against indigenous and traditional people, along with significant environmental destruction. The loss of Amazon ecosystems could be catastrophic for humanity, as the region’s forests are crucial for global carbon storage.
A foreseen environmental disaster in Colombia?
- On the morning of April 1, more than 60,000 people were hit by a massive landslide that dragged large amounts of water, dirt and mud downhill and buried 17 neighborhoods of Mocoa in the process.
- For risk management expert Gustavo Wilches-Chaux, the lack of land use planning is one of the factors that determined the impact of this natural disaster.
- Wilches-Chaux notes that some Colombian populations have settled along the tributaries of the main rivers of the country — areas highly vulnerable to floods, landslides and avalanches.
Panama’s Barro Blanco dam to begin operation, indigenous pleas refused
- For nearly a decade, Panama’s Barro Blanco dam has met with strong opposition from indigenous Ngäbe communities. It has also generated violent suppression from government forces, and attracted criticism from international organizations.
- An agreement on the dam’s completion, reached by the government and the community’s now-ousted leader, was voted down by the Ngäbe-Bugle General Congress in September 2016. The dam’s surprise deregistration from the UN Clean Development Mechanism in October 2016 did nothing to stop the project.
- Now, the General Administrator of Panama’s National Authority for Public Services has declared that the Ngäbe-Bugle General Congress never presented a formal rejection document to the government, meaning dam operations can begin.
- Panama’s Supreme Court has ruled against the last two legal actions by indigenous communities impacted by Barro Blanco. The Supreme Court decisions cannot be appealed, so the communities have now exhausted all legal avenues within the country, leaving only international processes.
Getting there: The rush to turn the Amazon into a soy transport corridor
- The development over the last 40 years of Mato Grosso state in Brazil’s interior as an industrial agribusiness powerhouse has, from the beginning, been hindered by a major economic problem: how to get the commodities to the coast for profitable export.
- The first route of export from Mato Grosso was a costly and time-consuming southern one, with commodities trucked on a circuitous route to Santos in São Paulo state and Paranaguá in Paraná state on the Atlantic coast.
- The paving of the northern section of BR-163, running south to north through Pará state, opened a much less expensive, faster route, with commodities now moved to Miritituba on the Tapajós River, then downstream to the Amazon, and on to Europe and China.
- New infrastructure plans call for the channelization of the Juruena, Teles Pires and Tapajós rivers, creating a 1,000-mile industrial waterway. Two railways, one over the Andes, are also proposed. These schemes pose grave threats to the Amazon rainforest, biodiversity, indigenous and traditional communities, and even the global climate.
Counterintuitive: Global hydropower boom will add to climate change
- For many years new hydropower dams were assumed to be zero greenhouse gas emitters. Now with 847 large (more than 100 MW) and 2,853 smaller (more than 1 MW) hydropower projects currently planned or under construction around the world, a new global study has shown that dam reservoirs are major greenhouse gas emitters.
- The study looked at the carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O) emitted from 267 reservoirs across six continents. Globally, the researchers estimate that reservoirs contribute 1.3 percent of human-made greenhouse gas emissions, comparable to those from rice paddy cultivation or biomass burning.
- Reservoir emissions are not currently counted within the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN IPCC) emissions assessments, but they should be, argue the researchers. In fact, countries are currently eligible under the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) to receive carbon credits for newly built dams.
- The study raises the question as to whether hydropower should continue to be counted as green power or be eligible for UN CDM carbon credits.
Forced evictions along Jakarta waterway a liability for Ahok as governor’s race nears finish line
- Flooding is massive problem in Jakarta. And most of its waterways are heavily polluted.
- The capital region’s Governor Ahok has tried to address the problem — including by demolishing riverside slums.
- Residents of Bukit Duri, which stood on the banks of the Ciliwung River until the government tore it down last year, are suing the city in a class-action suit.
Is Brazil green washing hydropower? The case of the Teles Pires dam
- The Teles Pires Hydroelectric Company (builder and operator of Brazil’s Teles Pires dam in the Amazon Basin) was awarded a Green Certificate in the “Responsible Social and Environmental Management” category of the Chico Mendes Award, a prize named after the murdered Brazilian eco-hero.
- The company has won other green awards for its construction projects (including Amazon dams), and been awarded carbon credits by the United Nations.
- But critics ask how green the company that built the Tele Pires dam can be when their project wrecked indigenous and traditional communities, led to the dynamiting of an indigenous sacred site, did harm to biodiversity and fisheries, while also likely producing significant carbon emissions.
- The company claims it is not to blame, because it complied with all government regulations during the dam’s construction, and even went further to make the project sustainable. The Teles Pires dam raises key questions about “sustainability,” and who has the right to define it.
‘Day of Terror’: Munduruku village attacked by Brazil’s Federal Police
- On November 7, 2012, Brazil’s Federal Police launched the Eldorado Operation with a raid aimed at destroying an illegal gold mining barge at Teles Pires, a Munduruku village. During the attack, an Indian was killed by police — “executed,” according to a Federal Public Ministry (MPF) investigation.
- The gold mining barge that was destroyed that day — and others in indigenous territory along the Teles Pires River in the Tapajós Basin — had been allowed to operate illegally by the government for years previously.
- The income earned from the gold mining barges had recently been used to fund indigenous opposition to the Belo Monte mega-dam, and resistance to more than 40 dams proposed for the Tapajós Basin. The extreme violence of the Eldorado Operation has shaken Munduruku trust in Brazil’s government.
- According to the Indians, the police told them to lie about these events, or face persecution. Mongabay’s videotaped eyewitness interviews have resulted in the MPF opening a new investigation into the Eldorado Operation; MPF is seeking US $2.9 million in damages for the Munduruku.
The end of a People: Amazon dam destroys sacred Munduruku “Heaven”
- Four dams are being built on the Teles Pires River — a major tributary of the Tapajós River — to provide Brazil with hydropower, and to possibly be a first step toward constructing an industrial waterway to transport soy and other commodities from Mato Grosso state, in the interior, to the Atlantic coast.
- Those dams are being built largely without consultation with impacted indigenous people, as required by the International Labor Organization’s Convention 169, an agreement which Brazil signed.
- A sacred rapid, known as Sete Quedas, the Munduruku “Heaven”, was dynamited in 2013 to build the Teles Pires dam. A cache of sacred artefacts was also seized by the dam construction consortium and the Brazilian state.
- The Indians see both events as callous attacks on their sacred sites, and say that these desecrations will result in the destruction of the Munduruku as a people — 13,000 Munduruku Indians live in 112 villages, mainly along the upper reaches of the Tapajós River and its tributaries in the heart of the Amazon.
Battle for the Amazon: Tapajós Basin threatened by massive development
- The Brazilian Amazon has systematically been deforested, dammed and developed by the federal government, river basin by river basin. The most recent to be so developed was the Xingu watershed. The next target, where road and dam construction has already begun, is the Tapajós Basin.
- Plans by agribusiness and the government call for the paving of the BR-163 highway (almost complete); the building of a new railroad, nicknamed Ferrogrão or Grainrail (just given approval); and the building of the Teles Pires-Tapajós industrial waterway, requiring dozens of dams, plus canals.
- As Mato Grosso soy plantations creep north deeper into the Tapajós region, agribusiness hopes to benefit from the rapid development of transportation infrastructure that will provide a cheap, fast northern road, rail and water route to the Atlantic for the export of commodities.
- Indigenous groups, traditional river communities, environmentalists and social NGOs oppose the mega-infrastructure projects, which they say will bring deforestation, cultural disruption, and quicken local and global climate change. The conflict is over no less than the fate of the Amazon.
Temer government set to overthrow Brazil’s environmental agenda
- A catastrophic setback to environmental and indigenous protections was narrowly averted last week when quick action from two federal deputies prevented the agricultural lobby from forcing passage of bills to authorize construction of three mega-industrial waterways in the Amazon and elsewhere.
- The Congress will likely pick up the bills again after the recess in February. They would authorize building many dozens of dams and industrial waterways in three river basins — PDC 119/2015 on the Tapajós, Teles Pires and Juruena rivers in the Amazon; PDC 120/2015 on the Tocantins and Araguaia rivers, also in the Amazon; and PDC 118/2015 on the Paraguai River.
- In 2005, a similar bill was passed, fast tracking the Belo Monte dam and bypassing proper environmental evaluation. Today, Norte Energia, the consortium that built the Amazon mega-dam has been charged with environmental crimes, ethnocide and is under investigation for corruption.
- Another bill working its way through the National Congress would completely gut the environmental licensing process for most infrastructure projects, while still another would take away hard won protections guaranteed to Brazil’s indigenous people in the 1988 Constitution.
Brazil’s dispossessed: Belo Monte dam ruinous for indigenous cultures
- Brazil’s Public Federal Ministry (MPF) launched a lawsuit in 2015 accusing Norte Energia, the consortium that built the Belo Monte mega-dam on the Xingu River in Pará state, along with the federal government’s National Indian Foundation (FUNAI) with the crime of ethnocide.
- Indigenous families say that serious harm was done to them when they were uprooted from their riverside homes; forced to give up their sustainable fishing, hunting and farming livelihoods; and compelled to seek jobs in an economically depressed urban environment.
- Tamawaerw Paracana, an indigenous woman, describes the everyday challenges her family faces as they try to survive in an urban resettlement community: “I don’t have the means to live here. I don’t have the money for food. Here you have to have a job.… People who don’t work, can’t eat. There’s no food.” The ethnocide case has yet to go to court.
- “Every day that goes by, there are more dams being built in our country; there are more people affected; and there are more rights violated. So our goal is to organize all the people affected and carry on this fight,” says Edizangela Alves Barros, an indigenous activist.
The media megaphone: does it help curb bad infrastructure projects?
- A tsunami of infrastructure development is putting global ecosystems, wildlife and indigenous people at risk; with 25 million kilometers of new roads planned by 2050, most in the developing world. Add pipelines, hundreds of dams on the Amazon, Mekong and other river systems, with their electricity used often by mega-mining projects.
- As in the past, this tidal wave of construction is being heavily backed by national governments, greatly benefiting industry and international investors, often at the cost of indigenous peoples, rural communities, wildlife and habitat. Government and industry typically have large public relations budgets to promote such projects.
- Many conservationists trying to mitigate the harm of ill-advised projects, or even see them canceled, are relying heavily on the media to achieve their aims. There is precedent for such a strategy: media coverage has historically played a key part in curbing some of the most ambitious of international mega-infrastructure projects.
- As infrastructure development rapidly accelerate, today’s environmentalists are utilizing all the media tools at their disposal — ranging from traditional newspapers and television, to Twitter, Facebook, blogs and YouTube — to shine a light on poorly designed infrastructure projects and inform and engage the public.
A dam shame: the plight of the Mekong giant catfish
- Southeast Asia’s Mekong giant catfish (Pangasianodon gigas) is the world’s largest freshwater fish, with the biggest among them weighing an astonishing 650 pounds (300 kilograms), and growing to a length of 10 feet (3 meters).
- Species numbers are thought to have crashed by 80 percent in recent decades, although there are no reliable population estimates for the fish. A sudden escalation in the construction of hydroelectric dams on the Mekong could seal the fate of the species.
- A host of dams, both under construction and planned, threaten to block the catfish’s natural migration patterns, potentially driving it to extinction. The Xayaburi dam, which is already being built, poses the most immediate threat.
- Radio telemetry and environmental DNA techniques are crucial to the study and monitoring of this elusive creature in the wild. Conservationists working at Cambodia’s proposed Sambor Dam hope to help the government design a project that might vastly improve aquatic connectivity.
Top scientists: Amazon’s Tapajós Dam Complex “a crisis in the making”
- BRAZIL’S GRAND PLAN: Build 40+ dams, new roads and railways at the heart of the Amazon to transport soy from the interior to the coast and foreign markets, turning the Tapajós Basin and its river systems into an industrial waterway, leading to unprecedented deforestation, top researchers say.
- ECOSYSTEM IMPACTS: “The effects would clearly be devastating for the ecology and connectivity of the greater Tapajós Basin,” says William Laurance, of James Cook University, Australia; a leading rainforest ecology scientist. “It is not overstating matters to term this a crisis in the making.”
- HUMAN IMPACTS: The dams would produce “A human rights crisis, driven by the flooding of indigenous territories and forced relocation of indigenous villages… [plus] the loss of fisheries, reduced fertility of fertile floodplains, and polluting of clean water sources,” says Amazon Watch’s Christian Poirier.
- CLIMATE IMPACTS: “The worst-case scenario… over 200,000 square kilometers of deforestation,” says climatologist Carlos Nobre, which would be “very serious” and create “regional climate change.” Tapajós deforestation could even help tip the global scales, as the Amazon ceases being a carbon sink, and becomes a carbon source — with grave consequences for the planet.
A plan to save the Mekong Delta
- The Mekong Delta Plan is the product of several years’ work by Dutch and Vietnamese officials, supported by a platoon of experts from both nations.
- It’s a blueprint for dealing not only with the effects of climate change and upstream dams but also with certain shortsighted activities by the Vietnamese themselves.
- The region’s farmers as well as the relevant branches of government must be persuaded to buy into the plan.
Environmental official murdered in Brazilian Amazon
- Luiz Alberto Araújo, head of the Altamira municipal government environmental department in the state of Pará, was gunned down in an execution-style killing last Thursday. 448 environmentalists were killed in Brazil between 2002-2013 — half the total murdered worldwide.
- Araújo provided information this year that helped lead to the arrest of a major illegal logging operation led by Antonio José Junqueira Vilela Filho, known as Ajj.
- Ajj ran his operation near Altamira for ten years, often only cutting valuable understory trees, and leaving the tallest behind to fool satellites and avoid detection. His operation kept loggers in slave-like conditions. Ajj was fined US$37 million, the largest such fine ever in the Amazon.
- Last February, Araújo’s team collected tons of dead fish secretly buried near the newly completed Belo Monte mega-dam, near Altamira. Norte Energia, the company operating the dam, was fined US$11 million for the 16.2 tons of fish illegally killed during the flooding of the dam’s reservoir.
Barro Blanco dam in limbo after Ngäbe-Bugle Congress rejects agreement
- The Barro Blanco dam on Panama’s Tabasará River has been controversial since its inception because of an alleged lack of consultation with indigenous people regarding the project, and because of its flooding of Ngäbe communities. The dam is now structurally complete, but many among the Ngäbe-Bugle still want it cancelled.
- While an agreement accepting the dam was reached in August between an indigenous representative and the Panamanian government, that accord was repudiated in September by the Ngäbe-Bugle General Congress, which said that their representatives overstepped their authority.
- At the September meeting, the General Congress created a new commission to analyze the project and make recommendations on future actions regarding the dam. The rejection of the agreement made between Panama’s government and the indigenous groups leaves no end in sight for the conflict.
Mother Nature and a hydropower onslaught aren’t the Mekong Delta’s only problems
- Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, home to nearly 20 million people, is one of the most highly productive agricultural environments in the world, thanks in part to an elaborate network of canals, dikes, sluice gates and drainage ditches.
- On the strength of Delta agriculture, Vietnam has gone from a chronic importer of rice to a major exporter.
- But farmers in the region are critical of the government’s food security policies, which mandate that most of the Delta’s land be devoted to rice production. And many of them are taking measures to circumvent those rules, in ways that aren’t always friendly to the environment.
- That’s just one example of how water and land-use policy in the Delta is undermining efforts to protect the vulnerable region from climate change and upstream development.
Vietnam sweats bullets as China and Laos dam the Mekong
- The Mekong River is the lifeblood of mainland Southeast Asia. It flows through six countries and affects the lives of some 60 million people.
- China and Laos are damming the river in many places. And Thailand is planning a large-scale of diversion of water that could further affect its flow.
- It’s still an open question whether the dams in Laos can be financed. Will Beijing step in?
Amazon radio network unites regional opposition to Tapajós basin dams
- The Amazon News Network has been in operation for nearly a decade, with the mission of providing news and information to unify people living all across the Amazon region of Brazil.
- The Network is especially involved in providing news about the massive infrastructure projects planned for the Amazon, including more than 40 dams slated for the Tapajós River basin.
- Late in August 2016, Amazon News Network founder Father Edilberto Sena, and Executive Producer Joelma Viana helped organize an environmental and social caravan that traveled from Santarém to Itaituba in Brazil’s Pará state at the heart of the Amazon. In Itaituba around 1,000 activists and concerned citizens gathered for a summit to develop sustainable economic strategies for the Tapajós region.
- The Itaituba summit called for the reinstatement of the Ministry of Agricultural Development (established in 1999 to oversee land reform in Brazil and promote sustainable practices, but abolished under the new Temer government). The participants also organized around their opposition to Tapajós dam construction plans.
Operation license for Amazon’s Belo Monte mega-dam suspended
- A Brazilian judge has suspended the operating license of the controversial Belo Monte dam in the Amazon because the Norte Energia consortium, the dam’s builder and operator, failed to meet a key compensation commitment required by the federal government.
- In exchange for the right to build and run the dam, Norte Energia originally agreed to install drinking water and sewage systems for the city of Altamira, with completion due in July 2014. The court allowed an extension to September 1, 2016, but the system is still not complete.
- Norte Energia had argued that its commitment only extended to constructing water and sewer lines, not to connecting those lines to residences — a contention which the court has rejected.
- The city currently dumps its sewage directly into the Xingu River, and waste is now building up behind the new dam. If the sanitation system isn’t quickly installed, officials worry that Altamira runs the risk of a collapse in sanitation due to the contamination of the city’s groundwater from domestic sewage.
Belo Monte dam compensation inadequate, say traditional fisherfolk
- The Norte Energia Consortium — the group of companies that built the Belo Monte dam — signed an agreement with the Brazilian government in 2011 to pay US $1 billion to Altamira residents, including indigenous people, in compensation for the impacts of the dam. But traditional fisherfolk complain they have not been adequately compensated.
- The traditional fisherfolk say that the Amazon dam negatively impacted water quality and fish spawning in the Xingu River, and drastically reduced the area in which they could fish. Belo Monte also deprived them of the markets where they sold their fish — communities razed by the dam.
- Belo Monte’s construction also forced them to move from rural villages to a gritty urban resettlement community in the city of Altamira with few amenities. The fisherfolk also no longer live on the river, and so must commute to the waterway to pursue their fishing livelihood.
- Fisherfolk protests resulted in the creation of a new condition for Belo Monte’s operating license at the end of 2015. Norte Energia has been obliged to start a technical assistance project focused on improving fishing conditions on the Xingu River. IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental agency, is also studying the loss of income, along with the loss of identity and traditional practices to draft a compensation plan.
Controversial dams on 5 Chilean rivers scrapped after years of campaign
- Spanish energy company Endesa announced on August 30 that they were returning the water rights of the five Chilean rivers to the state because its hydroelectric projects were not viable.
- A coalition of citizens, community groups, and NGOs have been lobbying for two decades, pressuring the Chilean government and Endesa to cancel the dams on Chile’s rivers because of their potential social and environmental impacts, as well as impacts on the tourism industry.
- But with Endesa relinquishing its rights to the rivers, other hydroelectric companies may move in to claim those water rights.
Planned Tapajós industrial waterway a potential environmental disaster
- The recent Brazilian government decision to cancel the São Luiz do Tapajós mega-dam was hailed as a victory by indigenous groups and environmentalists. But a new book describes the serious threats still facing the Tapajós basin.
- Brazil’s Tapajós is one of the most biodiverse and culturally rich regions in Amazonia. But it is also an area being aggressively eyed by agribusiness and the mining industry for extensive infrastructure development — to include a vast industrial waterway and major hydropower projects.
- The book, called Ocekadi (meaning “the river of our place” in the Munduruku indigenous language), includes 25 articles by academic researchers, and offers the most comprehensive analysis yet available of Tapajós environmental and social assets, and the threats facing them.
- Ocekadi is being published in Portuguese by International Rivers and Brazil’s Universidade Federal do Oeste do Pará (UFOPA).
Dams inevitably result in species decline, losses on reservoir islands
- Hydropower is being pushed hard in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe by dam developers who say it is an environmentally friendly form of alternative energy, but a recent study finds an unforeseen environmental impact for dams the world over.
- Islands created by reservoirs are often claimed as wildlife sanctuaries by dam proponents, but the study shows that such islands owe a big “extinction debt”, and see a slow but inexorable extinction of species, along with biodiversity impoverishment, over time.
- The meta-analysis evaluated data from 100 studies of reservoir islands at 15 dams in North, Central and South America, Europe and Asia. In more than 75 percent of cases, dams had an overall negative impact on reservoir island species, affecting species population density, ecological community composition, and species behavior.
- Reservoir islands have often been flaunted for their potential as conservation areas by dam developers. But the researchers recommend that islands no longer be counted as viable habitat or potential conservation areas in future dam proposals.
Promised US$1 billion in Belo Monte dam compensation largely unpaid?
- In a 2011 binding agreement with Brazil’s federal government, the Norte Energia Consortium agreed to pay US$1 billion to Altamira residents, including 9 indigenous groups, in compensation for the Belo Monte dam. Little has been paid to date, says the Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), an NGO watchdog group, while the consortium responds that it is meeting its obligations.
- Belo Monte significantly impacted Altamira’s environment and people, requiring the diversion of 20 kilometers of the Xingu River, reducing the stream’s flow by 80 percent over a 100 kilometer stretch, and dislocating indigenous people and other area residents; 8,000 families were displaced by the dam.
- According to critics, only 15 percent of required compensation to protect indigenous lands has been spent, while Norte Energia has failed to sufficiently secure entry points to indigenous lands, per their agreement, a failure that facilitated the entrance of illegal loggers who cut significant amounts of timber on Indian lands.
- Promised Altamira garbage collection infrastructure has yet to be put in place. While an underground sewage system and water distribution system have both been completed by the consortium, no houses have been connected to the system. Norte Energia argues that it is the city’s responsibility to make the connections.
Environmental licence for São Luiz do Tapajós hydroelectric dam denied
- Ibama, Brazil’s environmental agency has denied an environmental license for the proposed 8,000-megawatt São Luiz do Tapajós dam on the Tapajós River in the Amazon — a decision seen as a victory by the Munduruku Indians and environmentalists.
- The Amazon mega-dam would have required the flooding of Munduruku territory known as the Sawré Muybu — a land claim first recognized by Funai, the federal indigenous affairs agency, in April of this year. The Brazilian constitution forbids such uses of indigenous lands.
- The decision will not likely end controversy in the region. The Brazilian government has major development plans for the Tapajós river basin, including 43 dams on the Tapajós River and its tributaries, ten of which are considered priority, to be completed by 2022.
India floods kill more than 200 animals, including rare rhinos
- Severe floods have ravaged the state of Assam in northeastern India.
- The flood that began during the last week of July submerged around 80 percent of Kaziranga National Park (KNP), a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
- Rescue teams have managed to save more than 100 animals from the flooded forests.
Tapajós dams may bring fish kills, species loss, mercury contamination
- Brazil plans to construct seven hydroelectric dams on the Tapajós River and its tributaries — a part of the Amazon known for its exceptional aquatic and terrestrial biodiversity. The São Luiz do Tapajós hydropower plant is the largest and first proposed dam.
- An Environmental Impact Study (EIS) commissioned by the federal energy agency Eletrobrás in conjunction with the companies hoping to build the São Luiz do Tapajós dam says the project will cause a quick disappearance of habitat, loss of animals and reduction of their populations. Still, the EIS concludes the dam will cause little environmental impact.
- In an independent analysis of the EIS commissioned by Greenpeace, scientists criticized the methodology and results of the document, noting that it failed to identify or misidentified
- Because so little is known about Tapajós aquatic ecology, there is an urgent need for more studies before building begins, say experts. The hydroelectric project could jeopardize commercial fish species, the pink river dolphin, giant otter and black caiman. One fear is that the reservoir will concentrate dangerous levels of toxic mercury, poisoning fish and people.
Fish kills at Amazon’s Belo Monte dam point up builder’s failures
- In April, the Norte Energia consortium — builder of the now operational Belo Monte dam — was fined US$10.8 million for the death of 16.2 million tons of fish. Another flurry of fish deaths has occurred since then, and fishermen fear more to come.
- Critics say the dam’s construction has had negative impacts on the Tabuleiro do Embaubal, one of the most important turtle breeding sites in the Amazon basin; 20,000 Giant Amazon River Turtles (Podocnemis expansa) lay their eggs there annually.
- The dam’s builder and scientists agree Belo Monte will drastically curtail the annual floods that force the Xingu River over its banks and into the rainforests, harming aquatic connectivity and likely impacting genetic diversity and ecosystem health. Extreme drought due to climate change adds to that risk.
- Indigenous and traditional fisheries suffered steep declines during the building of the dam, with fishermen and scientists noting the disappearance of important commercial fish species such as the piraíba. Those losses could continue in future.
Amazon turtles imperilled by dams, mercury pollution and illegal trade
- The Brazilian Amazon is home to 17 turtle species, all of which are under pressure from overexploitation, the illegal wildlife trade, widespread hydropower dam construction, and mercury contamination. Deforestation, agricultural development and climate change are other looming threats.
- The Brazilian government’s Amazon Turtle Program focuses its conservation efforts on the Giant Amazon River Turtle (Podocnemis expansa), plus the Yellow-spotted River Turtle (P. unifilis), and Six-tuberculed River Turtle (P. sextuberculata). The Wildlife Conservation Society works with these same species and is also conserving the Red-headed Amazon River Turtle (P. erythrocephala), and Big-headed Amazon River Turtle (Peltocephalus dumerilianus).
- Amazon dams — especially mega-dams like the just built Belo Monte dam and the proposed Luiz do Tapajós dam — alter ecosystems and disrupt the annual flood cycles that inundate lowland Amazon forests, putting turtles and other species at risk.
- Mercury contamination of Amazon rivers due to illegal gold mining is a major threat to turtles. Researchers say there is an urgent need for the Brazilian government to develop and implement guidelines for the assessment of mercury toxicity in Amazon reptiles, especially turtles.
Small time land speculators profit in advance of Amazon dams
- Arlindo de Oliveira used to be a bricklayer for various Amazon dam construction consortiums. Over the years, he befriended company middle management and received inside information on dam site plans.
- For the past eight years, he has made big money as a land speculator, buying property within the flood zone of a proposed dam, then getting compensated for the loss of the land when it is flooded by the hydroelectric project.
- Oliveira lives within doomed riverside communities and lobbies actively for each dam, trying to convince locals its worthwhile to give up their properties. When the dam is built Oliveira moves on to the next big dam project.
- He’s done this four times: on the Madeira River, where the Jirau and Santo Antonio dams were built, on the Xingu River, where the Belo Monte dam was constructed, and now in the path of the proposed São Luiz do Tapajós dam,
64 dead in Indonesia landslides as La Nina brings heavy rains
- Central Java was hit the hardest, with 59 people confirmed dead in the province.
- At least five people were killed in the Sangihe Islands in Sulawesi.
- An environment ministry adviser is calling for natural resource extraction in Java, the world’s most crowded island, to be reigned in.
Amazonian catfish’s 5,000-mile migration endangered by dams
- Brachyplatystoma rousseauxii, a commercially valuable catfish species and an apex predator, grows to 3 meters long. Scientists have long suspected that it makes an extraordinary migration from the Amazon headwaters to the Amazon Basin and back.
- Now researchers — using an innovative technique that examines the chemical composition of adult catfish ear bones — have found proof of the 8,000-kilometer journey. The fish can drift as far downstream as the Amazon estuary, then swim back to the headwaters stream where they began, or to other Amazon tributaries.
- Unfortunately for the catfish, more than 400 dams have been built, are under construction, or are planned for the Amazon Basin and Andes feeder streams. Global research has shown that long homing migrations by fish are incompatible with dams.
- The researchers are urging governments in six Amazon Basin countries to reconsider and redesign their Amazon dam plans, or risk losing this natural wonder — along with seeing negative impacts to the entire freshwater food chain.
Arara Indians in Brazilian Amazon finally given right to their land
- Before the 1970’s, groups of Arara Indians lived a nomadic life in the Amazon rainforest along the Iriri River and had little contact with the modern industrialized world.
- Brazil’s military government pushed a highway through the heart of Arara territory and invited in settlers from northeastern Brazil who violently colonized what had been the Indians’ homeland.
- The Arara people were decimated by the road and by the invasion, and impacted yet again with the building of the Belo Monte mega-dam.
- This Spring, Brazil established the Indigenous Territory of Cachoeira Seca, covering 733,688 hectares (2,833 square miles) as a safe haven for the remaining Arara to rebuild their lives and culture. But illegal loggers still threaten their existence, and it remains to be seen if the new government of Michel Temer will actively protect the territory.
Dams threaten future of Amazonian biodiversity major new study warns
- An international team of biologists has studied the past and current impacts on biodiversity of 191 existing Amazon dams, and the potential impacts of 246 dams planned or under construction.
- Researchers identified negative interactions between dam construction, mining, industrial agriculture, commerce and transportation, climate change, and human migration that would likely seriously impact biodiversity and ecosystem services.
- Aquatic and terrestrial species that especially rely on fast-flowing river segments for habitat are greatly at risk, because such sites are the most targeted for hydropower projects.
- Solutions that could better protect biodiversity include a move away from mega-dams and other big infrastructure projects toward smaller dams; more careful hydro project siting; more wind and solar projects; and a more rigorous planning process that carefully considers environmental, indigenous, social and financial costs.
Dams flood 36,000 hectares of Brazilian rainforest
- The flooding is linked to two hydropower projects on the Madeira River in the western state of Rondônia.
- Much of the flooding occurred in primary rainforest that was once part of a national park.
- The deforestation has released millions of tons carbon dioxide.
- Biologists say that the dams could be harming species of catfish that migrate long distances to breeding grounds, as well as changing nutrient flows in the river.
Proposed Amazon dam attracts illegal loggers, threatens local farmers
- Dam construction in remote parts of the Amazon is historically proceeded by increased lawlessness as illegal loggers and squatters flock to the project site to cut timber and make land grabs from longtime farmers and other settlers.
- The proposed São Luiz do Tapajós hydropower plant on the Tapajós River has seen a rapid uptick in criminal activity, as loggers and squatters try to force residents from their lands, and make homesteaders take part in illegal logging schemes.
- Federal and state law enforcement is overstretched in the region, with just 60 personnel to cover an area three times the size of Florida. So the homesteaders are poorly protected from threats and violence.
- Rapid development of dams, canals, roads, railways and ports is aimed at turning the Tapajós basin into a major soy and grain transportation hub — a transformation likely to uproot the region’s long time small landholders.
Tapajós dam puts newly discovered species, indigenous people at risk
- The proposed Sao Luiz do Tapajós mega-dam, in the state of Pará, will have a maximum generating capacity of 8,040 megawatts, and if it is ever built, will cost an estimated R$ 23 billion (US$ 5.8 billion).
- The dam’s Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) identified eight mammals new to science and endemic to the region that will be flooded — these include a new monkey, marsupial, rodents and bats.
- The EIA has been deeply criticized by conservationists and scientists, who loudly deny its conclusion that the dam will have no major environmental impacts. Critics also note the urgent need to evaluate not just the impacts of this single dam, but those of at least 6 others to be built in conjunction with it.
- The fate of these new species, their habitat, and the indigenous and river people who rely on them for survival is unknown: Brazil’s economic crisis, president Rousseff’s impeachment, and a new conservative interim government has put infrastructure projects such as dams in limbo — for now.
Keeping Amazon fish connected is key to their conservation
- Amazon basin fish species living in lakes, floodplain forests and river systems need a high degree of connectivity to stay genetically diverse and healthy, but this connectivity is threatened by proposed dams and increased drought due to climate change — both of which threaten rainy season flood cycles.
- A new study finds that understanding the dynamics of Amazon metapopulations —subgroups separated from other subgroups in lakes and river systems, which periodically mix during flood seasons or migrations — is critical to conservation.
- Unless Brazil’s federal government and communities take freshwater conservation seriously — protecting interlinked lake, floodplain and river systems — commercial fisheries, and even forest diversity (due to fish seed dispersal) could be seriously at risk.
Ethics, sustainability, and Amazon hydropower: mission impossible?
- The Inambari dam would have flooded 46,000 hectares and displaced thousands of people in the Peruvian Amazon. It was a project of EGASUR, a consortium led by Eletrobras, a Brazilian firm. The dam met great opposition and was cancelled in 2011.
- Researchers analyzed the Inambari dam Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) commissioned by EGASUR and Eletrobras, and found that the EIA was guided less by the sustainable commitments expressed by the companies than by financial gain.
- The scientists urge the incorporation of similar ethical analyses in large-scale infrastructure projects that have multiple stakeholders, and which can have large impacts on the wellbeing of the environment, communities, nations and the world.
Amazon mega-dam suspended, providing hope for indigenous people and biodiversity
- Of the forty new dams proposed for the Tapajós watershed in the Amazon, the largest would be the São Luiz do Tapajós dam with an 8,040 megawatt generating capacity, which would flood almost 400 square kilometers (154 square miles) and deforest 2,200 square kilometers (849 square miles).
- The vast Tapajós Basin dam complex would be a disaster to Amazon biodiversity, and wreck indigenous and river communities, but likely fail to meet its energy and investor goals due to escalating drought due to climate change, according to environmentalists.
- This Wednesday, IBAMA, the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Resources suspended the São Luiz do Tapajós dam’s license, citing its threat to the Indigenous lands of the Munduruku Indians, a land claim just recently recognized by FUNAI, Brazil’s National Indian Foundation. The decision could still be reversed by the Brazilian government — as has happened with other Amazon dams.
- IBAMA’s decision comes a week after Greenpeace published an extensive report that enumerates the dam’s many threats to wildlife — including turtles, caimans, giant river otters, and Amazon dolphins — and to the lifestyles and livelihoods of indigenous groups and people living along the Tapajós River.
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