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.
On March 2 Honduran authorities arrested a hydroelectric company executive they say orchestrated the murder of indigenous activist Berta Cáceres two years earlier to the day. David Castillo Mejía is…
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).
A recent study finds that when parks and reserves don’t do a good job of safeguarding the forest they contain, they’re more likely to be stripped of their status as…
On January 23, a new national park joined Ecuador’s 54 protected areas. Río Negro-Sopladora National Park lies in southern Ecuador’s Morona Santiago and Azuay provinces within the Cordillera Real Oriental…
A new assessment of UNESCO Natural World Heritage Sites found 35 percent with significant conservation concerns, or worse. Most are in the Tropics.
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.
President Temer, pressed by the ruralist lobby, attacked indigenous and traditional land rights, conserved lands, and Amazon forests this year, and retreated from Brazil's Paris climate goal – analysis.
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.
Sitting on the banks of the Mekong River repairing his fishing net, 60-year-old Saron recalls a story from the time of his grandfather: “One cool November morning, Uncle Somnang was…
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.
Representatives of more than 150 civil society organizations gathered in Brasilia on Tuesday (19 September) to protest over the speech made by Brazilian president Michel Temer on Monday (18 September)…
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.