10 Rivers At Risk

Hydropower Dams Threaten Diverse Benefits Of Free Flowing River

Rivers flow through the heart of human history. For millennia, they provided water, food and transport, fuelling the rise of civilizations. In more recent times, we have tamed them – damming, dredging and diverting them to serve the needs of the agricultural and industrial revolutions. And in the process, silently, we have destroyed many of the benefits that healthy, free flowing rivers provide to people and nature.

The traditional importance of rivers to societies and economies is clear: around 2 billion people get their drinking water directly from rivers, which also provide water to 62 per cent of the world’s irrigated farmland, directly supporting about a quarter of our total global food production. Meanwhile, hydropower generates about 17 per cent of global electricity.

Take the 10 rivers in this report. From the Amazon to the Alps and the Mara to the Mekong, we highlight how 20^th century thinking about rivers and hydropower risks greenlighting decisions that are unsustainable and irreversible– decisions that will fragment these dynamic, living rivers and impact over 80 million people, who depend on them for fish, farms and a sustainable future. Decisions that are blind to the renewable revolution – the plunging price of solar and wind generation and new storage technologies -that has undermined the rationale for harmful, high-impact hydropower.

For the first time, we can meet our global climate and energy goals without damming the world’s remaining free flowing rivers. We do not need to stick to out-dated models that suggest that a huge increase in new hydropower capacity is still required to achieve these goals.