Article

June 2008 World Rivers Review: Legacy Issue  The majority of the world's major rivers have been dammed, leaving a legacy of environmental and social harms that has truly changed the planet. But managing dams in ways that mimic natural river flows can help offset the worst damages. The Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP), which transfers water from the mountain highlands of Lesotho to South Africa, is one of the world's largest water-resource developments. In addition to affecting tens of thousands of people living in the reservoir area, the project has, to one degree or

June 2008 World Rivers Review: Legacy Issue Fifty years ago, Tonga communities were forced to give up their traditional homeland during construction of Kariba Dam. Unforgiving terrain combined with the country's devolving political and economic situation have left the Zimbabwean Tonga facing greater challenges than their Zambian relatives, whose community well-being deteriorated following an inadequate resettlement. Starting in 2000, the Tonga-led Basilwizi Trust in Zimbabwe began helping rewrite the future of its people. International Rivers' Africa campaigner Terri Hathaway caught up with Bo

June 2008 World Rivers Review: Legacy Issue  "History does not allow injustices to vanish just because we are unable to address them."  Colombian author William Ospina The fight for justice made by the communities affected by the Chixoy Dam in Guatemala has been going on for more than two decades. Their story is stupefying. At the time the dam was being built, horrendous persecution and even massacres of people in the dam region took place at the hands of the dictatorship. The indigenous Maya-Achí communities that lived on lands adjacent to the Chixoy (Negro) River wher

June 2008 World Rivers Review: Legacy Issue  Our world is full of serious problems, from escalating violence and war to global food and water shortages to increasingly deadly natural disasters. With so many urgent issues, why should we care about the legacies of large dam development? At least 80 million people have been forced to make way for dams. Clearly, the world's 50,000 large dams have played a major role in fueling modern economies. Yet they have also flooded some of the most productive agricultural lands in the world. Changes in downstream water quality have decimated

Parte 1 Al día siguiente, todos cruzamos el río Quiroz. En la mitad del cruce, un helicóptero amarillo se nos aproximó lentamente desde una dirección y pasó; luego regresó y pasó otra vez zumbando desde la dirección opuesta. No le prestamos mucha atención. Estábamos muy ocupados con la diversión que nos causaba cruzar el río en el carro, y eso que nos estábamos empapando de la cintura para abajo a medida que el cable se combaba y arrastraba el carro por el agua correntosa. Después de ponernos calcetines y pantalones secos, empezamos a caminar por el terreno más inusual de nues

por Aaron Sanger Antes de alcanzar el océano Pacífico, el río Pascua, en la Patagonia chilena, recorre cuarenta millas (64,4 kilómetros) entre los dos más grandes campos de hielo de la Tierra fuera de la Antártica y de Groenlandia, abriéndose camino entre dos escarpadas cadenas montañosas. Nace en el Lago O'Higgins, el más profundo de América del Sur; el Pascua es uno de los ríos más correntosos del mundo, encajonado en un laberinto de cañones que drenan glaciares y cumbres cubiertas de nieve. Es también uno de los más remotos. En la actualidad, sólo hay un camino d

A lucrative hydropower scheme proposed for the Congo River could become Africa’s next great scramble. Led by the World Energy Council, major industries, banks, and governments will soon meet in London to seek their piece of the US$80 billion Grand Inga project – the world’s largest hydropower installation. The scheme is being promoted as a development venture to electrify the African continent, where two in every three people now lack access to electricity. Hundreds of officials and big money interests, including two firms debarred by the World Bank for bribery, will attend the Councilâ

2008 "Dams, Rivers and People" Report Allain Duhangan Dam, India, 192 MW The CDM application for this project states that the World Bank only financed it because of the expectation of CDM income. Yet the World Bank approved its funds for Allain Duhangan in October 2004, before the Kyoto Protocol entered into force, before any CDM projects had been registered, and before there was any certainty that carbon credits would have value. The dam's social and environmental impact assessment report from 2003 states that the project was the cheapest option for power generation in a

2008 "Dams, Rivers and People" Report Be Very Afraid: Climate Change by the Numbers • Current level of CO2 in atmosphere: 385 parts per million • Current rate of increase annually: 2 ppm • Stabilization level needed to avoid "catastrophic effects," according to climate scientist James Hansen: 350 ppm • Stabilization level if all industrialized countries followed President Bush's climate goal: 615 ppm • UN estimate of industrialized countries' greenhouse gas emission cuts needed by 2020 to avoid "dangerous" climate change

2008 "Dams, Rivers and People" Report There is no silver bullet that will bring a quick fix to the climate change problem - but a buckshot approach might just blow enough holes in it to make it more manageable. Here we feature just a handful of the many, many good initiatives that are tackling the problem head-on. A Technological Shift A Mighty Wind: In 2007, about 33,000 MW of new renewable-energy capacity was added worldwide, including 21,000 MW of new wind power and 2,700 MW of grid-connected solar photovoltaics - a 500% jump from just four years earlier. Wind contin