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2007 "Represas, Ríos y Gente" Informe (DRP) El camino "amable" en la gestión de las inundaciones abarca un conjunto sofisticado de enfoques que pretenden reducir la ocupación y desarrollo de las zonas más propensas a las inundaciones, adaptarse y colaborar con las fuerzas de la Naturaleza, y mejorar la respuesta a las emergencias. A continuación presentamos algunos ejemplos de lugares donde se están probando estas innovaciones. Dejar la llanura inundable: A raíz de la Gran Inundación del 1993 en el río Misisipi, se reformaron las leyes federales

2007 "Represas, Ríos y Gente" Informe (DRP) "Con el agua rebosando más arriba de los niveles permitidos de la Represa Ukai, y los cielos que no mostraban ninguna señal de despejarse, los ingenieros aparentemente abrieron las compuertas de las esclusas del embalse. Entonces, el agua hizo lo que el agua hace. Avanzó río abajo, tragándose esta ciudad de tres millones de personas como una bestia hambrienta." The New York Times India ha visto aumentar los daños por inundaciones al mismo tiempo que área total supuestamente protegida por proyectos de inge

2007 "Represas, Ríos y Gente" Informe (DRP) Las inundaciones son los desastres naturales más destructivos, más frecuentes y más costosos de la Tierra. Mientras que las inundaciones destructivas han sucedido durante toda la historia humana, los daños por inundaciones han subido astronómicamente en las últimas décadas, pese al gasto de cientos miles de millones de dólares para estructuras que debían controlarlas. Esto se debe en parte a que el recalentamiento planetario está causando tormentas más severas, y en parte a las crecientes poblaciones y actividades

On Dec. 10, 2007, a consortium of Brazilian companies won an auction to build and operate the 3,150 megawatt (MW) Santo Antonio dam on the Madeira River in the Amazon rainforest near Bolivia. Consorcio Madeira Energetica, led by large construction company Construtora Norberto Odebrecht SA, beat out two other consortiums formed by Spain’s Endesa SA and Franco–Belgian utility Suez. The winning group includes participation of state–owned electricity company Furnas Centrais Elétricas SA, engineering company Andrade Gutierrez Participações SA, Cemig Geração e Transmissão SA power utilit

March 2008 World Rivers Review The central assumption governing the design and operation of all major water projects has just been declared dead by a group of leading water and climate scientists. Designers and builders of dams need take note.The scientists, led by Paul Milly of the US Geological Service, explained in a recent article in Science that our dams, floodwalls and sewers have been designed and operated under the assumption of "stationarity" - that natural systems fluctuate within a defined set of extremes that can be estimated from past experience. But climate change means "stationa

March 2008 World Rivers Review Korea Federation for Environmental Movements (KFEM) has launched a letter-writing campaign to protest the proposed "Great Korea Canal Project," a huge river engineering scheme that would devastate wetlands in South Korea. According to KFEM, "This set of proposed canals would pave over every wetland, mountain, and riverbed in its path. Korea and the world have already lost too many precious wetlands and rivers." Newly elected President Lee Myung-bak is pushing for construction of the $16.8 billion canal project as a way to boos

March 2008 World Rivers Review Water wars in the arid western US are nothing new, but the rules of engagement have changed. The Klamath River basin on the California-Oregon border has been the stage for a decades-long epic battle between farmers, fisherman, government agencies, utilities, and tribes with treaty rights to dwindling salmon populations. More than 26 diverse groups have worked together to negotiate solutions to the most pressing problems the river faces, and are now close to a breakthrough that may breathe new life into the struggling river and its people. The stakehol

March 2008 World Rivers Review For 15 days in January, hundreds of men, women and children marched across river valleys of India's Uttarakhand state to raise awareness about government plans to build dams. The government intends to build 220 large, medium and small dams in the upper reaches of the Ganges River basin, the country's holiest of rivers. Organizers say the scheme will transform the sacred Ganges into a plumbing system with all of the life engineered out of it. "Our lakes and rivers, even the sacred Ganga, are in a rapidly deteriorating state. Our lives, work and cultures are t

March 2008 World Rivers ReviewNew studies confirm that fish ladders at dams in the tropics fail to meet their objective of guaranteeing the survival of migratory fish, and in fact could hasten the extinction of some species. Brazilian scientists found that ladders act as an "ecological trap," attracting schools of fish to poorer environments, and making it even more difficult for them to reproduce. Researchers studying a major dam built on the Tocantins River found that 16 migratory species were attracted by the turbulence of the water at the Lajeado Dam´s 874-meter-long fish ladder, built t

March 2008 World Rivers Review  South Africa is in the grip of a severe energy crisis, complete with rolling blackouts, industries stopping operations, much blaming and frustration - and plenty of opportunities. The crisis now squeezing Africa's most industrialized (and electrified) nation has been brewing for some time. Eskom is one of the largest single electricity utilities in the world - it produces 96% of South Africa's electricity and 85% of Sub-Saharan Africa's electricity. Its electricity is the cheapest and among the dirtiest in the world. South Africa has be