Rivers without Boundaries

Public Consultations on the AIIB’s “Draft Water Sector Strategy” Have a Lot of Room for Improvement. So does the “Strategy”.

On December 10, 2019 eighteen civil society organizations from 12 countries of Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas submitted to the AIIB initial comments with a hope to start meaningful consultations on key environmental and social issues specific to river basin management and water infrastructure development. Full text below. Submission …

282 Civil Society Organizations Oppose the CBI’s Climate Bonds for Hydro

In September the RwB Coalition published ” Our Response to the Climate Bond Initiative’s Attempt to “Climatewash” Hydropower “. Now 281 CSOs from 75 countries representing all major river basins of the world joined forces in a call to Climate Bonds Initiative to abandon proposed Standard for Hydropower, which has …

New Energy Agreement between Mongolia and Russia May Eliminate Plans for Hydropower Plants in Selenge River Basin

December 3. Moscow. Mongolia and Russia have finally signed an agreement on cooperation in electric power, development of which was triggered by Mongolia’s plans to build hydropower plants in Lake Baikal basin to achieve self-sufficiency in energy sector. On the part of Mongolia, such desire was partly due to lack …

Freshwater ecosystems wiped out in the Climate’s Name: a new study on hydropower frenzy in Europe.

As You, probably, know the main factor preventing rivers in EU to achieve “good ecological status” prescribed by the Water Framework Directive is “hydro-morphological alteration”, in other words – dams, dykes and other water infrastructure. One would expect, that policies of EU countries would be directed at removing and reducing …

South Asian countries join forces to destroy the last free-flowing river of Nepal

The Karnali River is the gateway to the Kailash Mandala region from the Ganges River. It provides a sacred corridor once travelled by Shiva and his wife Parvati on his way to his home in Mt. Kailash. Today, the river corridor is travelled by tens of thousands of pilgrims annually. …

EDF: In the first decade a hydrodam could cause more warming than a coal-fired power plant

The common understanding that hydropower is not a “climate savior” was recently supported by another solid study in a leading scientific journal. The Environmental Defense Fund has published a study in Environmental Science and Technology that it says shows that hydropower “is not always as good for the climate as …