by NESPON, NFFPFW and Nagarik Mancha
compilation | published September 2009 | summary | PDF
Here is the long-awaited latest issue of a magazine aimed at returning the dialogue about climate change and its solutions to the "public space." Featured are pathbreaking articles uncovering the reality of UN-sanctioned "carbon saving" projects in the metals, hydroelectric, wind power, chemicals, waste management and electricity generating sectors, as well as analyses of the political economy of the scientific controversies over the monsoon and over Asia's so-called "brown cloud" of pollution.
by Nicholas Hildyard
article | published April 2008 | summary | PDF
The Merowe/Hamadab Dam on the River Nile in Sudan, which was completed in 2009, is the largest hydroproject in Africa. The major contracts were awarded to three European companies: Lahmeyer International, Alstom and ABB. Implementation to date has been characterised by human rights abuses, forced resettlement, illegality and a failure to abide by international standards. The companies consistently failed to use their influence to halt the dam's implementation until issues surrounding its impacts were resolved.
by Nicholas Hildyard
briefing | published October 2008 | summary | PDF
Financial entrepreneurs created a 'shadow banking system' over the past 30 years to circumvent regulation and to offload risk onto others, relying on 'derivatives' and 'securitisation'. They generated easy credit that fuelled a boom in corporate mergers and acquisitions across the United States and Europe, and that enabled companies involved in mining, biofuels, private health care, water supply, infrastructure and forestry to expand their activities signficantly. When the pyramid of deals came tumbling down, however, the public had to bear the costs.
by Larry Lohmann
talk | published March 2008 | summary | PDF
Carbon trading proponents often assert that trading is merely a way of finding the most cost-effective means of reaching an emissions goal and a source of funding that leaves everything else exactly as it is. In fact, carbon trading undermines a number of existing and proposed positive measures for tackling climate change
by The Corner House and Kurdish Human Rights Project
report | published April 2007 | summary | PDF
In March 2007, the export credit agencies (ECAs)of Austria, Germany and Switzerland approved financial guarantees for the proposed Ilisu Dam on the River Tigris in the Kurdish region of Southeast Turkey. They stated that Turkey had provided the two downstream countries, Syria and Iraq, with the information these countries had sought about the Dam, and that Iraq had agreed to the project. Neither claim is true, according to Iraq's Minister of Water. By approving funding before Iraq and Syria had been consulted, the ECAs could be in violation of international law.
by Kurdish Human Rights Project, Ilisu Dam Campaign, The Corner House
report | published July 2002 | summary | PDF
In 2001, a delegation from three UK NGOs went to Syria and Iraq to conduct research and interviews on the potential downstream impacts of the proposed Ilisu Dam, scheduled for construction in southeast Turkey. The Fact-Finding Mission concluded that the Dam (and the wider GAP project of more dams and power plants) poses a real threat to future water supplies in Syria and Iraq, and urges the international community to press Turkey to halt further GAP projects until an agreement has been reached with Syria and Iraq that secures sustainable development of the Euphrates and Tigris.
by Nicholas Hildyard
presentation | published December 2005 | summary | full document | PDF
International finance institutions promise that the projects they back will comply with international environmental and social standards -- but these standards are frequently flouted. NGOs can document such violations so as to bring concerns to decision-makers, the wider public and the courts.
by Nicholas Hildyard, The Corner House, UK; and Eliah Gilfenbaum, Environmental Defense, USA
paper | published September 2005 | summary | full document | PDF
This paper documents new subsidies that ECAs may give for large dams; evaluates the accompanying standards that ECAs may require for dam projects; and identifies future ECA actions if funding for dams is not to have negative environmental and social impacts.
by ECA-Watch
report | published September 2005 | summary | full document | PDF
Northern governments may grant more export credits for large dams by classifying them as "renewable energy". This report details the negative impacts of five large dams and one water privatisation scheme financed with export credits.
by Larry Lohmann
paper | published September 2005 | summary | full document | PDF
Seeing social or technical change as the application of new "theory" to "practice" is one of the hazards of 21st-century middle-class life. Middle-class activists could take a leaf from both expert elites and grassroots movements, who both tend to know better.
by Nicholas Hildyard
presentation | published May 2005 | summary | full document | PDF
Infrastructure development is the point at which many conflicts, both past and future, over resources and decision-making meet. Several projects proposed or being implemented in Turkey illustrate these points.
by Nicholas Hildyard
article | published July 2002 | summary | full document
by Philip Williams & Associates
article | published August 2001 | summary | PDF
by The Ilisu Dam Campaign
article | published May 2001 | summary | PDF
by Ilisu Dam Campaign; the Kurdish Human Rights Project; The Corner House; World Economy, Ecology and Development; Eye on SACE Campaign and Pacific Environment Research Center
article | published 9-16 October 2000 | summary | full document
by The Ilisu Dam Campaign and The Corner House
article | published September 2000 | summary | full document
by Chris Lang, Nick Hildyard, Kate Geary and Matthew Grainger
report | published February 2000 | summary | full document
by Nicholas Hildyard
talk | published January 2000 | summary | full document
This presentation challenges four myths about large dams: that they provide a cheap and economic source of energy; that they are an environmentally-benign source of energy; that they are uncontroversial in Europe; and that they result from impartial decision-making processes. It poses several detailed questions for the World Commission on Dams.
by Kurdish Human Rights Project
article | published November 1999 | summary | full document
Report based on a five-day NGO fact finding mission in September 1999 to areas potentially affected by the proposed Ilisu dam, documents a wide range of human rights and environmental concerns. The Corner House was lead author of the report.
by Larry Lohmann
briefing | published August 1998 | summary | full document
by Nicholas Hildyard
briefing | published August 1998 | summary | full document
Popular opposition and changing macro-economic policies have disproved the claim that large-scale hydrolectric dams provide a cheap, reliable and economic source of power.
by Larry Lohmann
article | published March 1998 | summary | full document
All development projects follow a three-act dramatic plotline, as development agencies try to impose plans, meet local opposition, and improvise freely in an attempt to overcome resistance.
by Nicholas Hildyard
article | published February 1998 | summary | full document