New Report of Save the Tigris Campaign

The Rivers without Boundaries is proud to announce publication of the first ever comprehensive report on dams in Kurdistan Region of Iraq, prepared by the Save the Tigris Campaign, which we are the happy participants of.

According to the UNDP, the water discharge of the Tigris-Euphrates Rivers is set to decrease by 50% between 2009 and 2025. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) which governs the KRI recognizes water security as a priority. To tackle the issues of climate change, upstream dam construction and mismanagement, the …

The tragic failure of the Sardoba
dam has sparked fresh debate around water conflicts and the need for
cooperation between countries in Central Asia

Traumatic memories of Sardoba dam failure…

At 5.55 am on May 1, after five days
of severe storms, a dam wall at the Sardoba reservoir in the region of
Sirdaryo, Uzbekistan, collapsed and water poured through a breach onto cotton
fields and villages.

To reduce water pressure on the
walls of the reservoir and prevent further collapse of dam walls, its gates
were opened. Water spilled into the Southern Golodnostepsky Canal and its
offshoots, with the intention …

The Fish and the dam that brought it to extinction

Gezhouba Dam

Last year we placed these two pictures on the back cover of the Heritage Dammed report to UNESCO to illustrate the role of dams in mass extinction of freshwater biodiversity. We suggested that scientists will wait for 50 year before declaring the paddlefish extinct. We were wrong, by 49.5 years. Here is the article by Lily Katzman of Smithsonian Magazine:

China’s Yangtze River, the world’s third longest river, is home to 378 known species of fish. But the Chinese paddlefish, …

In July 2019 AIIB President promised to RwB “to be very cautious with hydropower”, it does not show in the Draft Water Sector Strategy

On December 10, 2019 eighteen civil society organizations from 12 countries of Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas submitted to the AIIB initial comments with a hope to start meaningful consultations on key environmental and social issues specific to river basin management and water infrastructure development. Full text below.

Submission to Consultations on the AIIB “Draft Water Sector Strategy”.

Introduction: Expectations

Ever since discovering that the AIIB intends to
develop a …

Conference Proceedings Download here

On October 8-9, 2019, the International Association of River Keepers “Eco-TIRAS” in partnership with the Institute of Zoology and in collaboration with the Faculty of Natural Geography of the Pridnestrovian State University named after TG Shevchenko organized a conference with international participation “The Impact of Hydropower on River Ecosystems”.

Conference Agenda download here.

Recommendations adopted by the Conference:

The conference
was attended by 120 scientists, practitioners and students from Pridnestrovie,
the Republic of Moldova, Romania, Ukraine, Sweden and the Russian Federation.
The reports presented at the conference examined various aspects …

On July 24 a web-journal towardfreedom.org published an article by Lital Khaikin “Between Sacred Waters and Natural Capital: Resistance to Hydroelectric Dams in Mongolia” 

Egiin Gol – still a free-flowing river

In recent years, Mongolia has sought
to expand its construction of hydroelectric dams in the northern provinces,
where large watersheds connect Mongolia to the Buryat’ Republic in Siberia.
Since the introduction of Mongolia’s Action Plan for Implementation of the
Green Development Policy for the period of 2016–2030, the country has
identified the river-systems in the northern provinces of …