Global call to STOP funding hydropower as false climate solution

We joined together with 300 organizations from around the world to call on our global leaders to protect rivers and stop funding hydropower projects as false solutions to the climate crisis. Hydropower is neither green nor climate-neutral and has led to an alarming loss of freshwater biodiversity. There is growing scientific evidence of the severe ecological and social dangers associated with hydropower and the risks of pursuing investment in dams for climate change mitigation. Scarce climate funds must be invested in a true energy transformation rather than in green lies.

In the Rivers for Climate Global Declaration, we all hold that:

• Free-flowing rivers, wetlands, and natural lakes have immense value for the welfare of the ecosystems they sustain, humankind, and survival on the planet.
• Rivers play a vital role in sequestering carbon and building climate resiliency, yet hydropower dams prevent rivers from serving these critical functions.
• Hydropower dams are vulnerable to climate change and will be further impacted by changing hydrology.
• Adding more dams will exacerbate methane emissions at precisely the time IPCC warns they must be dramatically reduced.
• Expanding hydropower is incompatible with efforts to address the looming biodiversity crisis. 
• The construction of hydropower dams routinely violates the human rights of impacted communities, particularly Indigenous Peoples.
• Climate finance has the potential to play a critical role in ensuring positive outcomes for rivers and for energy access.

Read the full declaration HERE and the associated Press Release. 

The Declaration remains open for new organizational endorsements until the Climate COP 26 in Glasgow: https://bit.ly/3hRUsGL