To:  Director, UNESCO World Heritage Center
CC: IUCN World Heritage Department.

RwB presents an NGO address on  dams threatening World Heritage 2018 World Heritage Committee session , Bahrain . See Do Dams Damage World Heritage ?
 
The  Greenpeace Russia and Rivers without Boundaries International Coalition (RwB) have serious concerns about the implementation of the World Heritage Committee decisions by the State Party of Russia for the Lake Baikal World Heritage Site.
Recently L. Baikal has been the arena of many changes in legal regulations and enforcement activities, most of them having …

 
 
 
Colombia’s prosecution is pressing criminal charges against the bosses of the Hidroituango Dam, whose recent malfunctions have caused environmental devastation for the Cauca River and its communities.
Help needed for those affected by the dam tragedy in Colombia
Investigations of irregularities around contracting, planning, and management are ongoing, and charges of contracting without fulfilling legal requirements – a criminal offence – are expected next month.
Despite an initially open process for the contracting of the dam in 2010, management claimed to have suspended the process, while continuing private discussions with EPM – Medellin’s …

On March 1 we witnessed  the first globally-coordinated  international action against a Chinese bank in response to a specific Belt and Road  project, which in this case is the Batang Toru Dam in Indonesia, which if built, will have a variety of negative environmental and social impacts, including dooming a newly discovered orangutan species to extinction. SEE We Ask Bank of China Not To Kill Our Relatives!
Activists were able to deliver WALHI/ Friends of the Earth Indonesia’s letter to Bank of China in: Madrid, Brussels, London, Accra, Nairobi, Maputo, Johannesburg, …

The Rivers without Boundaries International Coalition (RwB) shared with the UNECSO its deep concerns with  spurred development of Egiin Gol Hydro Project and cancellation of basin-wide Regional environmental assessment (REA) of hydropower by the World Bank MINIS Project in Mongolia.  Later in a separate letter, the Coalition together with Greenpeace will submit observations and suggestions on the Lake Baikal World Heritage site protection and management by the State Party of Russian Federation .

 
To: UNESCO World Heritage Center and
CC: IUCN World Heritage Department.
 
The Rivers without Boundaries International Coalition (RwB) …

 
A review of reactions of Russian press and public to “Chinese business expansion” at Lake Baikal World Heritage Site, published by  Eurasia Daily Monitor, captures  several important topics discussed today and highlights one of major underlying reasons – deep corruption of Russian officialdom all  he way down to local “self-government” administrations.
Photo: Chinese bottled water plant being built on Lake Baikal (Source: Regnum)
China is rapidly expanding its presence and control in Russia’s Trans-Baikal region. This drive is, in part, being driven by Beijing’s economic interests in Siberia and the Russian Far …

China-backed Hydropower Threatens to Wipe Out the Rarest Great Ape on Earth
Bank of China – financed Batang Toru dam threatens the Tapanuli Orangutan’s shrinking forest home
In 2020, China will host the biannual meeting of the Assembly of the Parties to the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD), a multilateral treaty that commits its signatories to developing strategies to conserve and sustainably use the Earth’s biological diversity and genetic resources. The Beijing meeting is the capstone on the United Nations Decade on Biodiversity, which has aimed to raise the profile of the …