Environmental Flows

East Africa's “Aral Sea” in the Making?“If Ethiopia completes the Gibe III Dam and continues to press ahead with large-scale irrigation developments, the result will be a cascade of hydrological, ecological and socio-economic impacts that will generate a region-wide crisis for indigenous livelihoods and biodiversity and thoroughly destabilize the Ethiopia-Kenyan borderlands around Lake Turkana. The long-term effect could parallel what has happened to Central Asia’s Aral Sea, one of the planet’s worst environmental disasters.” So begins a paper that describes how hydrological chang

A Primer on Environmental Flows"We have been taking all the flows from our rivers. Dams have regulated and fragmented the flows – often irreplaceably. More and more dams are still being planned to block the last flow and extract it for human use alone. Before it is too late we must act together to save the world's lifelines. Rivers need their flow back, to live and ensure the survival of all other beings including humans. These flows which are called the environmental flows, or the flows required by the river as an ecosystem and its connecting ecosystem to perform their evolutionary and e

Calfornia’s dammed Trinity River is flowing more naturally this year, thanks to an agreement to restore environmental flows. © Conservation Lands Foundation river's flow is its heartbeat. Few human influences are more deadly to freshwater ecosystems than alteration of natural hydrological rhythms. Poorly planned dams and unbalanced and unsustainable water use have brought too many of our river systems to a tipping point. Because we have interfered with the heartbeat of so many rivers and lakes, our freshwater ecosystems are losing species and habitats faster than any other type of e

Map of Area Directly Impacted by Belo Monte Dam from Belo Monte EIA What would be the true environmental, social, and economic costs of Belo Monte Dam? New studies by a group of independent experts have highlighted the serious consequences the dam would have for the region, its inhabitants, and ecosystems of the Amazon rainforest. Belo Monte, which with an installed generating capacity of 11,231 MW would be the world's third largest dam, and its complex array of two powerhouses, artificial canals, huge dykes, two reservoirs, spillways, ports, roads, and work camps would devastate more than 1