Hydroelectric Power News

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

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

After finishing his plate of yuca, rice and fried plantain, César Chávez received a call that he could not answer because his mouth was full. When he swallowed the last…

With COP23 well underway, scientists warn that President Temer’s policies could doom the Amazon and Brazil’s Paris goals, while destabilizing the global climate.

The Indonesian government is rushing to protect the newly described Tapanuli orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis), a species already regarded as the most endangered great ape on the planet. The discovery that…

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.

Yesterday, there were seven recognized great ape species in the world. Today there is an eighth, with the release of a study describing a new species of orangutan in Sumatra,…

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

On Sept. 25, amid a continuing crackdown on media, political opposition and civil society described by commentators as “a slide into dictatorship,” Prime Minister Hun Sen officially launched Cambodia’s biggest…

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.

A Brazilian court has ordered the Belo Monte dam to shut down due to resettlement violations, but Norte Energia, the consortium building and operating the dam, has so far refused to comply.

Facing displacement by massive infrastructure projects, villages in Malaysia's Sabah state work to shape their own development.

The term “controversial” is inadequate to describe the São Manoel Dam. It is located only 700 m from the Kayabí Indigenous Land and has already provoked a series of confrontations…

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.

Dozens of indigenous people gathered in a village in western Indonesia last month to protest against the development of a planned 510-megawatt hydroelectric dam that threatens to evict them from land they hold sacred.

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

Clean, renewable energy holds immense potential to help us tackle a rapidly warming climate. But until a major shift away from fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas, it…

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.

Brazil’s president approves new criteria for indigenous land demarcation to deny Indians their traditional lands; opens door to elite land thieves, agribusiness, opponents say.

PUERTO GARZA, Colombia – A Colombian conglomerate is moving ahead to build a nearly 400-foot-tall hydroelectric dam along the Samaná Norte River in northwestern Colombia, which threatens to extinguish critically…

On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we talk to Sarah Bardeen, the communications director for Berkeley, California-based NGO International Rivers. Bardeen wrote a commentary for Mongabay earlier this year…

“Our language is one, our river is one and the Munduruku people are one,” the Munduruku people often say. It was precisely this feeling of belonging that led some Indians…

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…

The Amazon basin faces irreversible environmental disturbance on an enormous scale due to hydroelectric dam development. Hundreds of existing and planned dams in both the Amazonian lowlands and the Andean…