Blogs

Hoover Dam intake, July 2008 (flickr.com/ellindsey000)

Back in March I wrote about a study showing a 50% chance that climate change would leave "Lake" Mead dry by 2021. Lake Mead is the huge (or at least formerly huge) reservoir behind Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. The reservoir supplies almost all the water for Las Vegas and much of that used by milllions of people in southern California and Arizona.

Turns out that maybe things aren't quite that bad, yet. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, a study to be released next year will show odds of less than 5% that the lake will dry up by 2021, and of 40% it will go dry in any given year after 2050. 

Barack Obama is considering appointing Larry Summers as his Treasury Secretary. Summers, a former World Bank chief economist and Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton, shot to fame with his suggestions that Africa is under-polluted, and that women are genetically less qualified to become scientists. A debate is raging in the blogosphere whether these cynical memos disqualify Summers from becoming Treasury Secretary. The real question is what policies Summers has promoted in his long career.

Leonardo DiCaprio. The Rolling Stones.

Now add seven western state governors and four Canadian premiers. These are the most recent riders of the carbon offsets bandwagon. Carbon offsets play a central role in the Western Climate Initiative (WCI), a carbon Cap-and-Trade scheme first introduced in July, that includes seven U.S. states (Arizona, California, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, and Washington) and four Canadian provinces (British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec).

Welcome to International Rivers' climate blog! Our climate team (Barbara Haya, Patrick McCully, Payal Parekh, Ann-Kathrin Schneider and Katy Yan) will be covering a variety of hot dam and climate related issues.

• We'll cast a critical eye at carbon offsets, and in particular the efforts by the hydro lobby to make money out of the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism. And we'll look at what better ways may exist to transfer climate friendly financing and technology.

Protest against submergence in the Narmada Valley

For decades, the Sardar Sarovar Dam on India’s Narmada River has been a powerful symbol of what is going wrong with large dam projects. A new independent review by a prestigious research institute shows that the project’s benefits have not been realized, while the social, environmental and financial costs are even more serious than expected. The dam authorities and the World Bank have a responsibility to clean up the mess which they have created.

Ocean pollution often starts in our communities, when trash and pollutants enter storm drains and rivers. Joel Harper, the author of a beautiful new children’s book, “All the Way to the Ocean” contacted International Rivers recently to see if we could help him distribute the Chinese version of the book. We helped him get in touch with Marine Dream and Roots and Shoots in China, and we liked his book so much we decided to plug the book right here!

The European Parliament last week awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, Europe’s most prestigious human rights award, to the Chinese human rights activist Hu Jia. The new generation of civil society activists whom Hu Jia represents is China’s best hope for addressing the country’s enormous social and environmental problems. The award’s condemnation by the Chinese government is a sign of weakness and fear.

A previous post on this blog claimed that John Briscoe had retired from the World Bank. This is not correct. John will retire soon, but is still the Bank's Country Director for Brazil. Read John Briscoe's comment on our blog post and a brief rejoinder. (The picture on the left is from a presentation by John Briscoe on the World Bank and infrastructure.)

Anonymous Crusader

A high-level independent evaluation found two years ago that the World Bank’s research agenda was often politicized, and that “technically flawed and in some cases strong policy positions have been supported by such (non) evidence”. A new book, Indirect Economic Impacts of Dams, is the latest example of such politicized research. The book, astonishingly, only considers the benefits and ignores the costs of dams. It is the parting shot of the Bank’s main large dam crusader, John Briscoe.

According to a report soon to be released by Oil Change International, the World Bank Group increased its lending for coal by an astonishing 256% in 2008. Lending for large hydropower projects increased from $751 million to $1,007 million. Support for renewable energy stagnated at a low level.