Rivers without Boundaries

Green Cure for BRI after COVID-19

Global Civil Society Call on Chinese Authorities to Ensure that COVID-19 Financial Relief is Not Targeted to Harmful Projects along the Belt and Road. On April 29, 2020, the Rivers without Boundaries along with other 260 civil society groups across the world called on the Chinese government to ensure that …

India’s Coronavirus Vigil Revealed the Real Purpose of Modern Hydropower

On April 3, PM Modi appealed to Indians to turn out their lights for nine minutes at 9 p.m. on Sunday. April 5th, to show solidarity amid the coronavirus lockdown with a show of lamps, candles and flashlights. Critics say it was done to distract attention from humanitarian problems caused …

Spilled Molybdenum Tailings Are Spreading Pollution in the Amur River Basin

The Amur-Heilong River has a long history of environmental pollution, with the worst cases resulting from industrial accidents. People of China and Russia still vividly remember the great panic of 2005 when a chemical plant blasted in Jilin Province threatening by toxic spill Harbin and Habarovsk cities and dozens of …

Green Peacock and Friends of Nature win a court case against hydropower in Yunnan

Despite coronavirus fears and strict quarantine China had witnessed a landmark victory in public-interest litigation on environmental matters. We congratulate Friends of Nature (and our friends) with this remarkable achievement and wish them to win this case to the very end. In July 2017, conservation groups Friends of Nature (自然之友), …

The Role of Energy Systems in Decline and Recovery of Aquatic Biodiversity

by Jeff Opperman , WWF-US Freshwater ecosystems and species are in crisis, and 2020 is a pivotal year for countries and companies to take steps to solve that crisis. What does this have to do with energy? A surprising amount.  From hydropower dams that fragment rivers and block fish migration …

Hydro-obituary: The Chinese Paddlefish, Which Lived for 200 Million Years, Has Been Dammed to Extinction

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. …