Rivers without Boundaries International Coalition (RwB) and Greenpeace Russia
Submission to the World Heritage Center and the IUCN. April 2018
Concerns regarding implementation of WHC decisions on Lake Baikal and recommendations for the 2018 World Heritage Committee Decision
Lake Baikal is undergoing serious environmental crisis. In 2017 among the good news was revocation by the Ministry of Natural Resources of the mining license for Kholodnenskoye Zinc deposit, which was the major step forward in ensuring lasting protection of the World Heritage Site. However, this is the only truly good news from …

According to the report jointly prepared by UN Environment‘s Economy Division, Frankfurt School-UNEP Collaborating Centre for Climate & Sustainable Energy Finance, and Bloomberg New Energy Finance in April 2018, the share of hydropower in net additions of installed capacity in 2017 continued to shrink globally. The RwB merged the Report’s data with news from other sources to assess the situation.

(Note: "net addition" does not capture 32GW of coal-fired plants and 25GW of gas-fired plants which "replaced" decommissioned facilities)
In absence of fresh data from the IHA we compared Bloomberg figures with …

Mekong River Commission Secretariat (MRCS) socioeconomic specialist Nguyen Thi Ngoc Minh said that the scenarios for 2020 and 2040 showed that if hydropower dam development in the Mekong River continues as planned, the economic benefits to the region would be overshadowed by the adverse impacts of the development.
“Development plans contribute to the economy of the region, as hydropower is expected to generate nearly half of the combined economic benefits from other sectors,  but it would cause greater impacts to other sectors as well,” Minh said.
She said that the impacts from …

In 2016-17 The RwB Coalition and allies have been trying to get response from Chinese banks about environmental and social safeguards used when lending to Yamal LNG Project.  We still have no response. This article in China Dialogue by Jenny Johnson contains new details on this growing threat to the  Arctic.

China’s state enterprises have invested heavily in Yamal LNG, a natural gas extraction, liquefaction and export project. Yamal LNG’s output capacity is around 16.5 million tonnes per year, according to Novatek, the project’s majority owner. It was officially …

A glimpse of hope for Siberian forests
 

Two  different events in  Russia and China may mean the beginning of the end for the Amazar Pulp and Saw Mill Project pursued by Heilongjiang Xingbang Company in Zabaikalsky Province of Russia.
In late March 2018 Greenpeace received an official reply from President’s Administration to a letter sent in late January. The reply lists among preconditions for completion of the Amazar Mill some of very familiar arguments that the RwB raised for years such as:
– need to update EIA and expand it to assess …