Affected People

Nexus Hug During the last few days I attended an international conference on the nexus of water, energy and food security in Bonn. The event offered a lot of diplomatic hot air, some promising ideas and engaging discussions. We were even taught a new way of hugging our fellow participants - the "nexus hug" - and practiced working in the embrace of dam builders, UN bureaucrats and government officials. The Bonn meeting had a sobering background. Our wasteful consumption degrades ecosystems at an alarming pace, yet more than one seventh of the world population suffer from hunger and don't ha

Myitsone Protest (courtesy of the BBC) The success of Burma's civil society groups in halting the Myitsone Dam may come as a surprise to many, but it is a product of the depth and strength of opposition to the project. It is also an indication that a different type of Burmese government is now in charge. The Burmese government's decision to suspend the controversial project on the headwaters of the Irrawaddy also highlights the serious risks of not engaging with civil society critics. The Myitsone Dam was one of the first projects to really "get under my skin" here at

Status of projects for which International Rivers and partners have submitted Comments as of July 1, 2011 For many years, International Rivers and our partners have been submitting comments on the worst hydropower projects in the CDM pipeline, raising issues ranging from environmental problems to human rights abuses to additionality. Our general experience has usually been that rather than seriously assessing public comments, the validators, also known as DOEs, ignore any criticism of the project developers' claims. Recently, however, a number of these projects, for which we had rai

Kachins protest at the Chinese consulate in San Francisco Kachins in California Last Friday, hundreds of people in the US, Denmark, United Kingdom, Malaysia, and elsewhere gathered to protest the recent deadly clashes between Burmese authorities and ethnic militias in Burma's northern Kachin State. Standing before Burmese and Chinese embassies, Kachins held up signs calling for an end to the violence and a halt to dam building by Chinese companies in Kachin State. Fighting broke out in early June between the Burma Army and the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) at the Dapein No.