IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental agency, has reversed itself, allowing Norte Energia, operator of the mega-dam, to divert water flow to turbines, potentially wrecking the river’s Big Bend Indigenous and traditional fishery.
Today we’re discussing proposed solutions to the global climate crisis that could have unintended consequences and thus might not be the effective solutions they’re promoted as. Listen here: Nature-based solutions…
BANTEN, Indonesia — Every day, Subur and his wife walk past giant chimneys, painted red and white at the crown, pouring smoke out of a cluster of coal plants. Subur,…
A plan by Brazil’s Norte Energia, builder and operator of the Belo Monte mega-dam, to drastically reduce Xingu River water flows will be a disaster for habitat, fish, fisheries, and riverine communities, experts say.
South America’s French Guiana, a French overseas department, is slated for major new liquid biofuel power stations, fueled by soy plantations that will cause largescale Amazon deforestation, say environmentalists.
The planned 650 MW dam on the Rio Branco in Brazil’s Roraima state is scheduled to become operational in 2028; it could do extraordinary socio-environmental harm.
Brazil’s current 10-year Energy Expansion Plan calls for three more large dams in Amazonia by 2029, and the country’s 2050 National Energy Plan lists many more — putting the environment at risk.
Like the rainforest which takes its name, the Amazon is the largest and most biodiverse river on the planet: the Amazon carries more than five times the volume of world's…
Dealing with climate change should be a no-brainer, right? To paraphrase Greta Thunberg, the science is done and only denial, ignorance and inaction remain. Or is that really all? We…
JAKARTA — A newly secured loan of $300 million for Indonesia to boost its geothermal energy generation will be wasted amid a glut of cheap coal power, and also could…
Electric cars are intended to help mitigate the climate impacts of the transportation sector, which is responsible for about 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions. But since electric vehicles, in…
A survey of 40,000 existing and 3,700 planned dams finds that the structures could fragment fish habitat in the Amazon, Niger, Congo, Salween and Mekong river systems by 25% or more.
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s parliament has for the first time prioritized passing new legislation on renewable energy, and activists have seized the opportunity to call for a shift away from coal.…
JAKARTA — Proponents of a hydropower plant to be built in the only known habitat of a critically endangered orangutan species say it’s important for meeting the future energy needs…
SANTARÉM, Brazil, and BERLIN — I got off the mototaxi, a means of transportation that is part of everyday life in several cities in the Amazon, took off the helmet…
BENGKULU, Indonesia — Hearings in a lawsuit filed by residents over a newly built Chinese-funded coal-fired power plant in Sumatra have revealed a litany of irregularities behind the permit that…
SAHANIVOTRY COMMUNE, Madagascar — The village of Farihitsara in Madagascar’s central highlands was littered with straw from the rice harvest when Mongabay visited in May. But people weren’t able to…
JAKARTA — Investigators in Indonesia have charged the head of the state-owned power utility with corruption in connection to a coal-fired plant being built in Sumatra. The Corruption Eradication Commission,…
As part of a wave of rural violence sweeping Amazonia, dam activist Dilma Ferreira Silva, her husband and a friend were brutally murdered last Friday; a large scale landowner is in custody.
This month’s nationwide blackout forced citizens to deforest parks for firewood, to pull water from polluted rivers, and resulted in the death of hospitalized babies and endangered wildlife.
JAKARTA — Usman’s been glued to the TV news lately. A young fisherman living in Batang, along the northeastern coast of Indonesia’s main island of Java, Usman is closely following…
Alcoa, Vale Mining, Suez Energy, Camargo Corrêa Energia, and Brazil’s government promised the town of Formosa mega-dam reparations, a pledge never fulfilled.
South American bats speak dialects different from those of their North American counterparts. In response, a group of scientists has developed the first artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm for acoustic identification…
JAKARTA — A planned hydroelectric dam that threatens the world’s most endangered great ape is already having an impact, days after a ringing endorsement from Indonesian officials and academics. On…
JAKARTA — Officials in the Indonesian province of Aceh have vowed to safeguard the last known habitat shared by tigers, orangutans, rhinos and elephants, but concerns abound that the proposed…
JAKARTA — Indonesia, the world’s fifth-biggest carbon emitter, has significantly scaled back its electricity output plans to boost the share of renewables, but will remain heavily reliant on coal. The…
Nearly 100,000 small hydropower dams exist or are planned worldwide, and science has done little to study or inform policymakers about cumulative environmental impacts.
Study: 142 existing and under construction Andean dams are fragmenting the Amazon, putting ecosystems at risk and impacting up to 30 million people. Another 160 dams are planned.
Operational in 2016, the Belo Monte mega-dam has done lasting damage to forests, fisheries, livelihoods, and indigenous and traditional communities (photo story).
Flood pulses, important to Amazon basin aquatic and terrestrial ecology, are being severely impacted by both large and small hydropower dams.
