Report

Excerpted from the new introduction of the updated 2001 edition of: Silenced Rivers: The Ecology and Politics of Large Dams It’s baloney and it’s much overblown . . . Methane is produced quite substantially in the rain forest and no one suggests cutting down the rain forest. Karolyn Wolf, spokeswoman for the US National Hydropower Association responding to International Rivers press release on greenhouse gas emissions from reservoirs, 1995 It seems difficult for many people to accept that the seemingly serene surface of a reservoir could be belching forth as much heat

Africa’s largest infrastructure project the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP) is a massive, multi–dam scheme built to divert water from Lesotho’s Maloti Mountains to South Africa’s industrial Gauteng Province. The first phases of the World Bank–supported project involve the construction of three large dams which, when completed will dispossess more than 30,000 rural farmers of assets (including homes, fields, and grazing lands) and deprive many of their livelihoods. In an effort to prevent the permanent impoverishment of these people, the governments of South Africa and

In September, 2000 the Theun-Hinboun Power Company (THPC) released its Mitigation and Compensation Program (MCP) Report. This briefing paper was commissioned by International Rivers Network in order to provide an update on the situation at Theun-Hinboun and to review and provide some analysis of the THPC's proposed Mitigation and Compensation Program.

This field report is based on a 1999 survey of villages affected by the Theun-Hinboun Hydropower Project. Investigations were primarily conducted to evaluate whether the process for assessing, negotiating, and allocating compensation to local people for project-related impacts has developed to the satisfaction of villagers and as envisioned by the Asian Development Bank. The Nam Theun-Hinboun Hydropower Project (THHP) in central Lao People's Democratic Republic (Lao PDR or Laos) began operating in early 1998. Most of the Lao PDR Government's equity in the THHP was financed by a US$60 million

In February 1998, during a dialogue with Lao government officials, International Rivers Network was encouraged to visit the Lao countryside and some dam sites. As a result, International Rivers Network visited six project sites at various stages of implementation and talked to many observers within the country. The sites visited included Nam Theun-Hinboun, Nam Leuk, Nam Theun 2, Houay Ho, Xe Pian-Xe Namnoi, and Xe Kaman 1. These field studies form the basis of this report, which aims to provide an overview of hydropower development in Lao PDR, informing the debate at the local, national and in

A Field Report on the Socio-Economic and Environmental Effects of the Nam Theun-Hinboun Hydropower Project in Laos This landmark publication by International Rivers Network was the first report to document the serious impacts of the Theun-Hinboun Hydropower Project on affected communities. The researcher interviewed 60 people in 10 villages on a three day visit to the project area in early March 1998, just months after the project started operation. What was particularly striking about the visits to villages in the project area--whether downstream in the Nam Kading, downstream in the Hai/H

Dai Qing As officials prepare to divert China’s mighty Yangtze River to build the world’s largest dam, Chinese journalist Dai Qing has released a new book of critical essays about the controversial Three Gorges project. The River Dragon Has Come!is a stern warning to China’s leaders from prominent Chinese intellectuals, engineers, and journalists about the dam’s potentially disastrous effects on China’s economy, people, and venerable Yangtze River. Chinese officials are planning to divert the Yangtze River through a coffer dam on November 8, allowing construction of the two-kilomet

River dolphins are small, aquatic mammals which belong to the order Cetacea. Scientists today classify river dolphins as endangered species because many populations have declined in recent years as a result of widespread habitat degradation and habitat loss. River dolphins once ranged widely throughout the rivers and coastal estuaries of Asia and South America. Today river dolphins live only in limited portions of the Yangtze, Mekong, Indus, Ganges, Amazon and Orinoco river basins and coastal estuaries in Asia and South America. River dolphins flouish in zones of quiet water typically found ne