Video: A mockumentary about biodiversity offsetting
July 10, 2014
Компенсация потерь биоразнообразия в Европейском Союзе станет осуществившейся мечтой для некоторых инвесторов и настоящим кошмаром для природы.
Video: A mockumentary about biodiversity offsetting
July 10, 2014
Biodiversity offsetting in the European Union would be a dream come true for some investors – and a nightmare for nature.
The hydropower plant Boskov Most, Macedonia
May 6, 2014
In November 2011 the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development approved a EUR 65 million credit to ELEM, a Macedonian state-owned company for the construction and management of the hydro power plant “Boskov Most”. Around 80% of the project falls into the territory of the “Mavrovo” National Park.
Threat posed by hydro to Mavrovo National Park under the spotlight at Skopje conference
April 15, 2014
On Thursday in Skopje, over 100 people attended the first public conference [mk] regarding the two planned hydropower plants in the Mavrovo National Park, one of the oldest and most valuable protected areas in the country. A petition to save the park that was launched one day earlier has already gathered over 13 000 signatures.
UPDATE: Danube dam-busting – Under the radar EU funds grab spotted in Slovakia
March 25, 2014
A highly problematic Danube dam project has found its way into the Slovak Operational Programme for the Cohesion Policy spending in the 2014-2020 period and has become a small scandal in the country.
Whose Energy Community? Treaty improvements urgently needed
March 20, 2014
The EU-backed Energy Community Treaty, signed in 2005 and comprising the western Balkan countries, Ukraine and Moldova, has been widely hailed as encouraging regional co-operation. It also sets a legislative framework for the signatories (also known as the contracting parties) that should contribute, along with the EU accession process, to addressing the environmental and social impacts of the energy sector. Indeed, examples of the Energy Community’s added value are its adoption of renewable energy targets in October 2012, as well as a requirement for power plants to comply with EU emissions limits.
‘Fools and liars’ – major new report slams mega-dams, as tensions rise over Georgia’s Khudoni project
March 20, 2014
A new report published on March 10 by a team of researchers from the University of Oxford, based on the largest ever study of large hydroelectric dams (245 in 65 countries) has found that in most cases large dams are economically not viable and few, if any, will realise their planned benefits. The study assessed the costs, construction time, and benefits of all large dams built around the world since 1934, and further concluded that the severe cost and construction delays that so often dog large dams (defined in this research as those that exceed 15 metres in height) mean they can be seriously damaging to the economies that attach so much hope to them.
Georgian hydro projects are a test case for the EBRD’s good governance policies
February 12, 2014
As activists pointed out at a consultation meeting in Tbilisi, Georgia’s hydropower sector has plenty of lessons to be learned by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
UPDATED: Six months and counting… EBRD silent on investigations into its own operations
December 3, 2013
Is the EBRD deliberately dragging its feet on publishing investigation reports on large hydropower plants in Georgia, Macedonia and Croatia?
Victory for civil society as EBRD cancels loan for controversial Croatian dam
May 28, 2013
Today we’re relieved in Zagreb as one energy project that could have had a destructive impact on Croatia’s future has lost its financing and thus its chances of going ahead are drastically reduced: I’m speaking about the infamous Ombla dam, a project for an underground hydropower plant that would have practically destroyed a protected area close to Dubrovnik.
