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Low-Cost Drip Systems Bring Income, Food Security to Rural PoorWorld Rivers Review, December 2003 Paul Polak thinks big and designs small. He aims to cut rural poverty worldwide, and he’s using humble $1 micro-irrigation kits to do it. “Water is essential to alleviating poverty,” Polak says. “If you want to do anything about it, you have to start with small farmers and irrigation.” Unlike the big development agencies, which put their faith in “trickle down” economics fueled by mega-projects, Paul Polak is establishing a new kind of “trickle down” economy, based on individual

From World Rivers Review, October 2006 Kariba Dam The Zambezi River is one of southern Africa's most important lifelines, and its delta is a Ramsar "Wetland of International Importance." However, it is also one of Africa's most heavily dammed river systems, and its health is in decline. More than 30 large dams (including two of Africa's largest, Kariba and Cahora Bassa) constrict its flow of water and sediments, and more large dams are planned. A new dam, Mphanda Nkuwa in Mozambique, is farthest along, and is expected to result in a push for industrialization in the Zambezi Valley. Dam-indu

The China Export-Import Bank agreed in April 2006 to finance the proposed Mphanda Nkuwa Dam on the Zambezi River in Mozambique. The river basin and its delta are already suffering major environmental impacts from numerous dams upstream, including two of Africa's biggest, Cahora Bassa and Kariba. The environmental degradation in turn affects about a quarter of Mozambique's population, who depend upon the river's natural support systems for their livelihoods.  Chinese engineering company Sinohydro will lead the consortium to build the US$2.3 billion project. According to local m

Dam Safety Concerns Provide Window of Opportunity for RestorationIn the aftermath of catastrophic flooding in New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina and extreme storm events in the Northeastern United States that brought several dams to the breaking point, renewed attention has been focused on the growing crisis of dam safety in the US. River-protection groups would like to turn this crisis into an opportunity for river restoration through the removal of obsolete and unsafe dams. These events brought attention to the need for stronger state and federal dam safety policies and programs, and the po

The recently released Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a UN–sponsored analysis of the overall health of the planet, reveals the extent to which humanity’s destruction of the natural world is threatening our ability to thrive on the planet. The report – the largest–ever assessment of environmental changes and their impacts on human well–being – reveals the rapid and accelerating degradation to ecosystems that are essential to life on Earth. While some of these environmental changes are "invisible" to the average person, others are more obvious – such as worsening floods, droughts

For a couple of weeks in late September, sooty plumes of black smoke billowed from the stacks of the Mozambique Aluminum (Mozal) smelter on the outskirts of the Mozambican capital, Maputo. A year after the plant opened, a cooling tower in the treatment plant corroded and gave way, spewing sulfur dioxide and toxic fluoride into the air. A company official admitted that fluoride was in fact being released, but was quick to claim, "While the black plume now issuing from the top of the treatment plant is unsightly, it is not dangerous." Anabela Lemos of the Mozambique environmental group Livaningo

This article on the Upper Kotmale Hydropower project was prepared by Hemantha Withanage for the South Asia regional consultation of the World Commission on Dams in 1998.

In 1963 India’s then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru gushed at a ceremony for a new dam project: "The Bhakra Project is something tremendous, something stupendous, something which shakes you up when you see it. Bhakra, the new temple of resurgent India, is the symbol of India’s progress." Shripad Dharmadhikary’s newly released report "Unravelling Bhakra" deconstructs this myth.The infrastructure project is said to have irrigated the granaries of the nation, India’s North–western states Punjab and Haryana. The legend goes that after the construction of the Bhakra dam, food grain produ

On December 31, 2006, the wall of the Sardar Sarovar Dam in India’s Narmada valley was raised to 122 meters. The Sardar Sarovar Dam is the largest in a series of dams, reservoirs and canals that control the flow of the Narmada River, the fifth largest river in India. With this height increase, the dam will flood more than 37,000 hectares of forest and agricultural land and raise the number of displaced people to 320,000. Many of the affected people are indigenous advasis and farmers, who are left with no viable option for resettlement. On the first of January, hundreds of affected people ga