Over 20 hydroelectric projects proposed for the main trunk of the River Maranon would have devastating impacts
Who said large-scale hydropower was out? As an article published by Climate Central recently noted, it has now been omitted from the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) annual reports on renewable energy for eight years running, and “may be seen as a risky bet” for investors.
But Peru, together with one Brazilian company in particular, may have other ideas. As I recently reported in a series of articles for Mongabay, Peru is proposing to build more than 20 dams on the main trunk of the currently free-flowing River Maranon, which births in the Andes and is the River Amazon’s main source. According to Peruvian engineer Jose Serra Vega, just four of these dams could cause the Maranon’s “biological death”, while US environmental anthropologist Paul Little believes it could contribute to the “eco-system collapse” of the Amazon basin as a whole.