Flooding News

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.

The Norwegian mining giant has denied a new toxic spill in Brazil at its Alunorte aluminum refining facility, but admits to a “clandestine pipeline to discharge untreated effluent.”

Operational in 2016, the Belo Monte mega-dam has done lasting damage to forests, fisheries, livelihoods, and indigenous and traditional communities (photo story).

This is a story of hope. Bangladesh is extremely vulnerable to climate change. Threatened by rising sea levels, storms and cyclones, floods have become commonplace, with seawater encroaching both homes…

On today’s episode we feature a conversation with iconic Canadian scientist, author, television presenter, and activist David Suzuki. Listen here:   Suzuki is a biologist by training and a former…

Even as Donald Trump calls climate change a hoax, the U.S. military is recognizing it as a national security threat, and revving up to protect its bases and operations in a climate destabilized world.

Flood pulses, important to Amazon basin aquatic and terrestrial ecology, are being severely impacted by both large and small hydropower dams.

In 2018, expect more Amazon assaults by the Temer administration, as indigenous and environmental resistance builds, with court rulings and October elections adding uncertainty.

In a major policy shift, the Brazilian government says it is abandoning plans for new mega-dams in the Amazon basin, a victory for conservationists and indigenous groups.

Weeks of flooding in Bangladesh in August 2017 reportedly claimed the lives of over 100 people, displaced tens of thousands more, and destroyed more than one million acres of crops.…

Habitat fragmentation and biomass reduction on isolated forest islands at the Balbina dam – with trees replaced by lianas – resulted in increased carbon emissions.

Rivers in the Amazon are cycling between increasingly severe states of flood and drought, as predicted by climate change models, and the results are directly impacting local wildlife and the…

LAKE LIMBOTO, Indonesia — Anton Kui has fished here since he was in fifth grade. He remembers he could quickly catch a day’s worth of fish close to his home.…

Under President Correa, Ecuador partnered with China, building megaprojects like the Coca Codo Sinclair dam, with negative outcomes for local communities and the environment.

A new study found that mining caused nearly 10 percent of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon between 2005 and 2015, not the 1-2 percent assumed by past assessments.

During the wet season, manatees swim Amazon basin floodplains; in dry times they migrate to lakes. Hundreds of planned dams could disrupt that cycle.

Last Friday, eighty Munduruku warriors — demanding an apology for destruction of two sacred sites — tried to occupy an Amazon dam; they were met by armed police.

A brief legal battle related to the Barro Blanco hydroelectric project in western Panama concluded late last month in a rare triumph for the impacted indigenous communities who have opposed…

100 families, given legal title to their land by the Brazilian government, are being threatened by illegal miners. The Temer government has yet to respond.

Study warns that six hydroelectric mega-dams proposed for Andean highlands would put environment and food security at risk in Amazon basin.

Brazilian court finds Norte Energia consortium guilty of failure to keep housing commitments for those displaced by mega-dam in Amazon. Installation license suspended.

Activists, military police, and other unusual collaborators meet in Marabá, Pará, Brazil to seek agreement on sustainable solutions, extraction, dams.

When rivers flood, the results can be devastating, ruining crops, disrupting ecosystems and destroying homes. The UN estimates that we lose $104 billion a year to swelling rivers. Understanding how climate…

Mining of vast diamond reserves, plus three new dams which could power the mines, would likely harm Indians on Roosevelt and Aripuanã rivers.

Tool helps communities, researchers, policymakers, activists assess a proposed dam’s economic viability, greenhouse gas emissions and more.

KAZIRANGA NATIONAL PARK, India — Annual monsoon floods earlier this month inundated more than 70 percent of India's Kaziranga National Park, home to the world's largest population of greater one-horned…

Many dozens of major infrastructure projects — including highways, dams and mines — have been given the green light in the Brazilian Amazon in recent years, and hundreds more are…

The Madeira River, one of the Amazon’s major tributaries, is the focus of intense hydroelectric dam development, part of a massive wave of infrastructure construction occurring across the Amazon basin.…

In the late 1970s, Raimunda Gomes da Silva and her husband, João Pereira da Silva, moved to Tucuruí in Pará state. João went to work on the dam being built…