Dams

By Survival International The Enawene Nawe Indians of the Brazilian Amazon have said they feel ‘desperate’, as their annual fishing ritual has provided them with almost no fish. This is the fourth year running that the Indians have encountered drastically low fish stocks in their rivers, and the second year in which the ritual could not be properly performed. This year’s catch is reportedly even lower than in 2009, when the Indians faced a catastrophic food shortage. ...

By Jeremy Hance / Mongabay Six years after the Yangtze river dolphin ( Lipotes vexillifer), or baiji, was declared “functionally extinct” by scientists, another marine mammal appears on the edge of extinction in China’s hugely degraded Yangtze River. In less than two months, 32 Yangtze finless porpoises ( Neophocaena asiaeorientalis asiaeorientalis), a subspecies of the finless porpoise, have been found dead in Dongting and Poyang Lakes in the Yangtze, reports the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). ...

By Steve Hargreaves / CNN U.S. imports of what environmentalists are calling “dirty oil” are set to triple over the next decade, raising concerns over the environmental impact of extracting it and whether pipelines can safely transport this Canadian oil. The United States currently imports over half a million barrels a day of bitumen from Canada’s oil sands region, according to the Sierra Club. By 2020, that number is set to grow to over 1.5 million barrels – or nearly 10% of the country’s current consumption. ...

By Rhett A. Butler / Mongabay More than 150 new dams planned across the Amazon basin could significantly disrupt the ecological connectivity of the Amazon River to the Andes with substantial impacts for fish populations, nutrient cycling, and the health of Earth’s largest rainforest, warns a comprehensive study published in the journal PLoS ONE. Scouring public data and submitting information requests to governments, researchers Matt Finer of Save America’s Forests and Clinton Jenkins of North Carolina State University documented plans for new dams in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. They found that 40 percent of the projects are already in advanced planning stages and more than half would be large dams over 100 megawatts. 60 percent of the dams “would cause the first major break in connectivity between protected Andean headwaters and the lowland Amazon”, while more than 80 percent “would drive deforestation due to new roads, transmission lines, or inundation.” ...

By Rachel Nuwer / The New York Times At a casual glance, Lake Turkana in northern Kenya may not seem a fount of milk and honey. The temperature around the lake hovers around 100 degrees, and tourists are warned not to approach the water because of the crocodiles and vipers lurking among the volcanic rocks. Yet Lake Turkana, the world’s largest permanent desert lake, is regarded by many anthropologists as the cradle of humankind. Today it serves a vital purpose for local indigenous communities that depend on its waters for fish and other resources; in 1997, citing its rich biodiversity, Unesco listed it as a World Heritage site. ...

By Selva Rico Project The Panamanian government has plans to build a massive hydroelectric plant within the Naso Indigenous Reserve. The Naso partake in week long road blocks as we hear from one of the matriarchs of the community, Virginia, and her views on what will become of their culture if the project is allowed to move forward. [vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/37544203 w=600&h=450] From Selva Rica Project:

By Agence France-Presse Chile’s Supreme Court Wednesday removed the last legal obstacle to building a giant $2.9 billion hydroelectric complex in the Patagonian wilderness, rejecting a bid by environmentalists to block it. The highly controversial project, which environmentalists say will wreck a unique and pristine habitat in the southern tip of South America, sparked violent protests last year. The high court “confirmed it was rejecting” an appeal by green campaigners to halt the $2.9 billion HidroAysen project of Spanish-Chilean consortium Endesa-Colburn, a court spokesman said. ...

By Jeremy Hance / Mongabay A federal judge has suspended the construction of a 1,820 megawatt dam on the Teles Pires River in the Amazon. The judge found that indigenous communities were not properly consulted about the dam, which would flood a sacred site, known as the Seven Waterfalls, as well as imperil the livelihoods of indigenous fishermen. “The compensation [the government is] offering will never substitute places that are sacred to us, such as Sete Queda [Seven Waterfalls], that hold the cemeteries of our ancestors and that should be preserved. Sete Quedas is also the spawning grounds of fish that are an important source of food. They talk about fish ladders, but where have these ever worked?” Taravy Kayabi, a leader of the indigenous Kayabi people, said in a press release, adding that, “The government needs to look for alternative ways to generate energy that don’t harm indigenous peoples and their territories.” ...

By Survival International New photographic evidence proves Ethiopia’s controversial plantations scheme is killing the Lower Omo River, a lifeline for 100,000 tribal people. The Omo River downstream from the notorious Gibe III dam is now being diverted into a newly-dug irrigation canal, one of several which will feed a massively ambitious plantations scheme for state and private investors. These manmade canals are key to Ethiopia’s plantations plan, which is already having a hugely negative impact on UNESCO’s Lower Omo World Heritage site. ...

By Lucy Hornby / Reuters China’s Three Gorges Corp. on Thursday marked the beginning of construction for a dam that will flood the last free-flowing portion of the middle reaches of the Yangtze, the country’s longest river. The 30 billion yuan ($4.75 billion) Xiaonanhai dam is decried by environmentalists because it will flood a nature reserve designed to protect about 40 species of river fish. Completion of the dam would turn the middle section of the Yangtze into a series of reservoirs, leaving “no space for fish”, said environmentalist Ma Jun, who has been active for over two years in trying to prevent the dam. ...