Albania’s Skavica dam can’t get off the ground – time to finally cancel it!
November 24, 2025
The highly damaging hydropower project could hardly have had stronger political support at its inception, with the country’s parliament passing a special law in 2021 to appoint U.S. construction giant Bechtel as the main contractor. But four years later, the project has stagnated, with no environmental permit and no financing.
Romania’s Parliament paves the way for environmental destruction and ‘foreign agent’ repression
October 20, 2025
Romania stands at a dangerous crossroads. Last week, a law initiated by the senator Daniel Zamfir in 2022 and already then rejected by the Senate, passed by a crushing majority (262–33) in the decisive Deputies Chamber.
Expanding the Emerald Network: Progress and gaps in the Western Balkans
October 9, 2025
At the 15th meeting of the Bern Convention’s Group of Experts on Protected Areas and Ecological Networks – held from 7 to 8 October 2025 in Bar, Montenegro – participants reviewed progress towards establishing the Emerald Network of protected areas. As part of the programme, the group visited Lake Skadar, one of Montenegro’s key Emerald sites, acknowledging the government’s efforts to safeguard this unique ecosystem.
Montenegro’s stop-start spatial plan set to greenlight harmful hydro projects
June 24, 2025
Montenegro is touted as the lead EU accession candidate these days, but it’s unfortunately far from ready. The country’s hotly debated new national spatial plan is a case in point, plagued by delays, legal breaches, opacity and all-round low quality.
Central Asia: environmental groups and scientists call on international financial institutions to preserve key freshwater bodies and stop supporting destructive hydropower projects
March 14, 2025
The future of Central Asia’s key rivers and lakes is at risk, warn international environmental groups Rivers without Boundaries, International Rivers, Friends of the Earth US, Urgewald and CEE Bankwatch Network in a formal request sent today to the World Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), European Investment Bank (EIB), Asian Development Bank (ADB), Eurasian Development Bank (EDB), Islamic Development Bank (ISDB) and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).
Kungrad 1-3 wind power project, Uzbekistan
March 11, 2025
Kungrad is one of several large-scale renewable projects featuring extensive transmission lines slated for remote, wild areas in Central Asia – an alarming practice that hinders the sustainable energy transition.
Free-flowing rivers in Central Asia
March 3, 2025
Central Asian rivers are under threat from hundreds of new hydropower plants. We have created a map of the key rivers in the region that need urgent protection and are calling on the development banks to stop their destruction.
How to interact with development banks lending to hydropower projects in Central Asia: A toolkit for civil society activists
February 3, 2025
This toolkit is aimed primarily at civil society organisations in Central Asia tackling the construction of dams or other unsustainable water infrastructure.
Is crypto keeping Tajikistan’s Rogun Dam project afloat?
December 23, 2024
In a letter sent earlier this year to Bankwatch, World Bank officials defended Rogun as a potentially “transformative clean energy project that will improve domestic and regional welfare and contribute to the decarbonization of regional power grids in Central Asia, provided it is managed under sound macro-economic, commercial, and social and environmental sustainability frameworks.”
The World Bank should reconsider its mega dam project in Tajikistan
December 16, 2024
Providing funding to a repressive regime to construct the ‘highest dam in the world’ is a recipe for disaster.
