errorism and sabotage are just two of the criminal charges brought against more than 20 residents of the Dulcepampa watershed in Ecuador’s central Bolivar province for their opposition to a…
Hydroelectric dams will not come up on five Chilean rivers, at least for now. On August 30, Spanish energy company Endesa announced that it was revoking all claims to Futaleufú,…
n early August, the Brazilian government unexpectedly cancelled the São Luiz do Tapajós hydroelectric power station, the largest of a series of major dams planned along the Tapajós River and…
The governor of Indonesia’s Aceh province is moving forward with a plan to rezone part of Mount Leuser National Park for geothermal development, despite opposition from conservationists who say the…
n Monday, indigenous Ngäbe protestors opposing the controversial Barro Blanco dam in western Panama disrupted a ceremony marking the project’s completion deal, leading to violent clashes with police. The deal…
ydropower development is booming, with controversial projects unfolding across the Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe. Though often presented as a green renewable energy option, dams can cause a litany of…
arlier this year, the Norte Energia Consortium completed building the gigantic Belo Monte hydroelectric project — the third biggest in the world — located within the municipality of Altimara in…
razil’s environmental agency, Ibama, has decided not to give an environmental license to the São Luiz do Tapajós hydroelectric dam, the first of a series of dams planned for the…
ish kills, mercury contamination, the extinction of known aquatic species (along with others still not known to science), plus the physical and economic ruin of indigenous and traditional river communities.…
ven before the controversial Belo Monte hydroelectric power station — the third largest in the world — began operation in April of this year, the harm the project was doing…
or as long as people have lived in the Amazon, turtles have likely been on the menu. But what was once low-impact subsistence hunting escalated dramatically after the arrival of…
rlindo de Oliveira worked 30 years as a bricklayer in the state of Paraná in southern Brazil. Now, he’s found a new job in the Amazon. He buys up land…
singular Amazonian catfish is capable of an amazing feat: hidden from human eyes, the species travels vast distances over its lifetime, making a round trip covering more than 8,000 kilometers…
It's a dangerous time to take a stand for the environment. 2015 was the worst year on record for killings of people defending their forests, rivers, and lands from industrial…
n a decree published this April, the Brazilian government of President Dilma Rousseff awarded a large area of land to the last remnants of the Arara Indians whose cultural and…
mazonia’s surge in hydropower development threatens numerous species with extinction, and puts unique habitats at risk, warns a recent study. River dolphins, giant otters, turtles, fish, birds and monkeys will…
Several years ago, two dams were built across the Madeira River in western Brazil. Now researchers have found that doing so has led to the flooding of more than 36,000 hectares…
s night falls on the Areia Homestead Project, forty kilometers from the town of Trairão, in the western portion of Pará state, the silence is cut short by the roar…
t least eight mammals not yet cataloged by science were discovered during the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for Brazil’s Sao Luiz do Tapajós hydropower plant, proposed for the western part…
magine a fish isolated in an Amazonian lake — part of the vast freshwater ecosystem of the Amazon basin, an ever-changing network of rivers, lakes and floodplains that extends to…
Protected areas are an important tool for conserving the world’s forests and biodiversity. Perhaps no country has proven that as thoroughly as Brazil, home to one-third of the world's tropical…
Commission in the Brazilian Senate — cloaked by the political turmoil in Brasilia — has quietly approved a constitutional amendment that would shred the environmental safeguards currently required for public…
atin America’s largest electrical company operates 45 hydroelectric dams, and is responsible for 34 percent of Brazil’s generating capacity. The company, Eletrobras, makes laudable claims about its corporate values, including…
The São Luiz do Tapajós mega-dam, whose construction would lead to “social and environmental disaster” according to a Greenpeace report published last week, received a significant setback on Wednesday when…
Government and company officials in California and Oregon have reached an agreement to remove four large hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River in the hopes that it will restore the…
razil’s BNDES (Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social) is the largest development bank in the Americas. The largely taxpayer-funded bank has played a key role in Brazil’s economic development…
e left the indigenous village of Tukaya early in the morning, and later that day reached our final destination: the ESEC-TM (Terra do Meio Ecological Station), which we’d come to…
azetted” lands previously appropriated for the proposed Baram hydro-dam in the state of Sarawak in Malaysian Borneo will now be returned to their indigenous owners, the Sarawak government has confirmed.…
In this the fifth of sixth articles, Sue Branford delves into the history, and likely future of IIRSA and its relationship to BNDES. ore than 400 hydroelectric dams are already…
aking our way up the Iriri River, we encountered another voadeira (motorized canoe). Sitting motionless along the river bank, it was packed full of indigenous Xipaya Indians — men, women…