The last year ended up with a  massive landslide blocking hydropower reservoir on Bureya River. Since the RwB reported on the issue last year considerable attention of national authorities and international media was drawn to it. Many politicians have participated in crisis-solving making this somewhat reminiscent of parallel  drama of Hidroituango, where emergency operation was remotely supervised by the new president of Colombia two days ago. The only entity which keeps low profile and has minimal information on its web-sites is the Rushydro State Company which owns the Bureya …

Nepal’s hydropower boom needs strategic assessment and public oversight

Children crossing a bridge across Budhi Gandaki River in Arughat, Nepal (Photo by Eugene Sim0nov)
Prologue: A tale of two dams
In 2017, I visited 1,200 MW Budhi Gandaki hydropower project, 70 kilometers from Kathmandu, and found many similarities with the Egiin Gol hydropower project in Mongolia, long monitored by our RwB Coalition. 
Both projects were designed in the 1970s Soviet-school mega-hydropower planning style, both have not progressed in 40 years. In both cases, the international consultancy Tractebel Engineering proposed to increase dam height …

In 2018 at least 126 Colombian human rights activists have been killed according to Frontline Defender’s report, some of those killings are related  to the valley of Cauca River   altered by the Hidroituango hydropower project. Over last several years many activists protesting dam establishment  disappeared or have been killed by dam proponents. 
Since April 2018 this project is also haunted by tremendous engineering challenges due to landslides and mistakes in design which brought construction to a halt. Up to 25 000 people were placed under threat of imminent flooding …

The most interesting aspect from the RwB perspective is that massive new dam 800 meters wide, 400 meters long and 40-160 meters high altering a river with the largest hydropower cascade in Russian Far East was accidentally  discovered by two local hunters around December 14. It is soothing to know that despite having zillion of satellites examining earth surface and ever increasing efforts to monitor every drop of water inflow into its mammoth hydropower reservoirs the great country still relies for  its security on simple trappers roaming deserted landscapes …

 
Can one promote great common good on behalf of association of companies from 80 countries and then immediately extract tangible private gain from it?
Please, be patient – read a string  of news covering first 3 weeks of December.

UN DESA shows commitment to climate action at COP24
The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs is stepping up its presence at the annual UN Climate Change Conference, to be held from 2 to 14 December in Katowice, Poland. “We must promote synergies between the SDGs and climate change to advance …

We are getting used to it: “No one was killed, we are happy” –became a standard  reaction to “better” incidents at large-scale dams   which are on the rise this year. So far in 2018 just on the RwB’s record large dam accidents happened in China, Colombia, Kenya, Laos, Myanmar, Russia. On December 13, in a “mild man made emergency” one of three gates of Dicle dam on Tigris has broken pouring water in unprepared downstream valley and partially submerging UNESCO World Heritage Site. Besides poor maintenance and lack of  public …