Blogs

An independent study released this month by Gabonese NGO, Brainforest, documents the devastation caused by uranium and manganese mines in southeast Gabon.

Bhagirathi River at Gangotri, Uttarakhand, India (Atarax42)

For the third year in a row, one of India's most eminent scientists, Professor AD Agarwal, has carried out a "fast-unto-death" in protest against the 600 MW Loharinag Pala hydropower project in Uttarakhand, India. Last year, project construction stopped after Prof. Agarwal came close to dying on the 38th day of his fast, only to resume a year later.

Earlier this week, lead by the Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, a group of ministers (GoM) announced they would scrap the project completely. As part of the decision, the government has created India’s first dam-free zone in the ecologically sensitive area, through which the river will flow freely for 135 kilometers. Prof. Agarwal has called off his fast as environmental, religious, and social justice groups rejoice at the news.

Ethiopia's Gibe 3 Da m remains the most destructive dam being built today. According to the official project website, Ethiopia plans to pay $572 million (448m Euros) from their own pockets.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) (www.vivoscuola.it)

"The body of the earth is of the nature of a fish...because it draws water as its breath instead of air," said the Italian painter, scientist and engineer Leonardo da Vinci.

Block that flow of life with a massive concrete dam, or clog it with a thick solution of toxic chemical and organic pollution, and the earth grows sick. This is not just poetic metaphor, but reality for communities living along the Mekong, the Amazon, the Omo River, and so many others.

(www.stickergiant.com)The Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) has long been known to be a honey pot of carbon credit income for cheating project developers. But a recent investigation commissioned by German NGO CDMWatch shows that the problem is even worse than many critics had feared.

Soldiers help flood survivors board an evacuation truck (dvnews.org)

There are three vital global lessons to learn from the ongoing flood catastrophe in Pakistan. First, the rise in the planetary temperature has reached a tipping point. We are now in a scary new era of extreme weather. Extremes are the new normal. And there's no going back, at least not in our lifetime, and very likely not in that of our children.

Pimental Island, site of Belo Monte's secondary dam, entering the Big Bend (Zachary Hurwitz/International Rivers)

Another engineer has critiqued the Belo Monte Dam on technical and economic grounds, joining scores of experts who predict that the infrastructure project will be a massive failure. Walter Coronado Antunes, the former Secretary of the Environment of the state of São Paulo, and ex-President of the influential state water and sanitation utility Sabesp, stated that, if built, Belo Monte Dam would be "the worst engineering project in the history of hydroelectric dams in Brazil, and perhaps of any engineering project in the world.  A true shame for us engineers." 

WindsorONE is a small company that endeavors to reduce it's exposure to risk associated with Patagonia dams

Company takes steps to distance itself from suppliers who are involved with mega-hydroelectric development in Aysén Region of Chile.

In weighing the costs and benefits of large-dam hydropower within the context of climate change, how do the scales add up?

You've heard us talk about how large reservoirs contribute to climate change through the emission of methane, how dams make rivers less resilient to climate change, threaten biodiversity, and of course, displace thousands of people upstream while negatively impacting thousands more downstream. That's the costs side.

As a public service in this age of information overflow, the Policy Police has just published a list of Top 50 Public Policy Bloggers. And right there in the policy stratosphere, among shining lights such as Paul Krugman, the Daily Kos and Politico, ranks my own humble policy blog. “If you are interested in environmental public policy on a global scale, Peter Bosshard’s blog is the way to go,” the Policy Police recommends.