World Rivers Review – March 2013: Focus on Environmental Impact Assessments

Date: 
Monday, March 18, 2013




Are environmental impact assessments effectively protecting river systems and those who depend on them? What flaws are preventing the process from being more effective? Are EIAs just paper tigers? This issue of World Rivers Review explores the topic in-depth, with articles by and interviews with top experts in the field. Learn what they have to say about the promise and perils of our current EIA process, and how we can improve it.



What’s inside

  • Commentary: Moving from the technical to the fundamental: why we need to move upstream of the EIA process.
  • Analysis: Why impact assessments are failing to protect rivers, and what must be done to improve the process.
  • Interview: Talking to three experts on how to improve the EIA process.
  • Campaigners’ Notebook: How local activists have used the nation’s EIA laws to halt a plan to build multiple dams in Chilean Patagonia.

Also in this issue

  • China: The world’s largest dam builder is drawing ire at home and abroad with new plans to build dams on three shared rivers
  • Mekong: Fish passages are a poor match for Mekong dams’ impacts
  • US: The failed promise of fish ladders
  • Solar Power: Grameen Shakti’s model for bringing clean energy to the poor