By the time the dam engineers came down the rocky path above the village of Tupen Grande on that night in June 2014, the peasant patrol was waiting, clubs in their hands.

For months, engineers from Oderbrecht, the Brazilian construction company, had been trying to enter the area to conduct surveys that would allow the construction of the Chadin II dam to move forward. That mega-dam on the Marañon River would flood Tupen Grande and neighboring villages. In response the villagers had formed a ronda, a peasant militia, to keep the engineers out. Their logic: no surveys, no dam.

The two groups met on the rocky path above town.

“We captured them and brought them back”, said Cesar Chavez Romero, the president of the ronda. Traveling with the engineers, Chavez added, was a “traitor:” Tupen’s schoolteacher. For months the teacher had been agitating in support of the dam; he encouraged children to pressure their parents; even was caught collecting people’s ID numbers to pass to Oderbrecht so that it could check their land titles.

“We kept warning him to stop, but he wouldn’t,” Chavez said. The ronda deposited the engineers and schoolteacher back at the village’s casa communal, or community house, where by now the villagers were gathered, drinking. “There were people shouting all sorts of things: to punish them, to beat them,” Romero said. “It was very tense. We had to figure out what to do.”

National agenda hits wall of local defiance

This confrontation – with a peasant militia essentially kidnapping dam employees – exemplifies a larger pattern that has emerged in Peru over the past decade. Across the country, the central government and multinational corporations have come up against fierce resistance from local, typically rural, communities opposed to large dam and mining projects – whether it be copper at Tia Maria, gold at Yanacocha, or dams at Tupen on the Marañon River.

That antagonism often flares into violence.

There are over 200 ongoing social conflicts in Peru, the majority of which, according to the government ombudsman, are over the “use and control of natural resources.” Through all these heated battles, force has emerged as an effective strategy for local communities who want to protect their land.

Land and natural resources have been at the heart of conflict in Peru since there has been a Peru. The country is fabulously wealthy in minerals – Peru leads Latin America in production of gold, silver, zinc, lead, and tin. It also has rich farmland that grows lucrative cash crops, and mountain rivers suitable for mega-hydropower projects. But the price of these endeavors is often environmental disaster: clearcut forests; contaminated rivers; flooded communities; verdant mountains reduced to moonscapes by open pit mines, with little of the benefits or profits trickling down to local towns.

Peru’s highly centralized government prevents locals from having any say in whether that development will happen, where it will happen, or how, or even if, locals will be compensated for the degradation of their forests, farms, lands, livelihoods and villages. That’s because Peru belongs to “the people,” which is to say: the people running the government in Lima, which in Tupen’s case is hundreds of miles away and on the other side of a two-mile high mountain range – imagine the shouting, and maybe shooting match, if all decisions regarding mining projects in Idaho were made in Washington D.C. It is this far-off national government, which has the ultimate say on dam and mining concessions. And that government sends in the police if the locals resist.

The Baguazo legacy

Take, for example, the Baguazo, a famous revolt in 2009 in Amazonas province by the Awajun nation and other local people. In the past, Peru’s native communities earned and held relatively strong land rights, a progressive legacy wrestled from hundreds of years of violent exploitation. Indigenous people won the legal right to prior consultation on any laws that might affect them.

Then in 2008, the Peruvian Congress passed new forestry legislation, which indigenous groups feared would open their lands to unwanted mining and hydrocarbon exploration. One law gave the state the right to auction off forests, which indigenous groups feared could lead to the private sale of 45 million hectares of forest lands (173,746 square miles) – as much as 60 percent of Peruvian Amazonia. Then there was the law that allowed mining and gas companies to apply directly to the central government for concessions, which indigenous leaders feared would allow those companies to avoid consulting with and winning over local communities.

The legal changes happened in the background of a campaign by the central government to encourage mining and logging in Amazonia. In 2007, president Alan Garcia published a now-famous editorial in El Comercio, the nation’s oldest newspaper, asserting that developing the resources of Amazonia was in the national interest, and chastising indigenous groups for their “Dog in the Manger attitude,” after the Greek fable of the barnyard dog who won’t let a horse eat grain, even though he can’t eat it himself.

“There are millions of hectares for lumber that lie idle, other millions of hectares that communities or associations have not cultivated, nor will cultivate,” Garcia wrote, “as well as hundreds of mineral deposits that cannot be worked and millions of hectares of ocean which are never used for farming or production.” Peru, Garcia argued, needed these resources for the development of the nation as a whole.

But to native groups, the change in the forestry law looked like the lead up to a corporate land grab: especially since the land that “lay idle” was the land they lived on. After attempts to get the law repealed failed, the Awajun, in the time-honored manner of Peruvian social protests, turned to seizing property. They took over two foreign gas installations in the northern forests and captured several policeman, who they held as hostages.

When the government called a state of emergency in the region, which would allow it to send in troops, Alberto Pizango, a member of the Shawi nation and a protest leader, warned that “indigenous people are defending themselves against government aggression.”

As negotiations with the government stalled, the indigenous groups upped the ante: 2,000 Awajun took control of the highway leading into the provincial capital of Bagua Chica, in the wide-open rice country above the forests where the Awajun lived. At a spot on the highway outside Bagua called La Curva del Diablo, “The Devil’s Curve,” they set up camp and big communal kitchens; charged tolls to traffic; and waited for Lima to come to them. Behind the Awajun blockade, rice trucks piled up. Nothing like this had ever happened before: so many indigenous peoples out of their communities, challenging the state. It forced Lima to take notice.

Little might have come of the protests had the central government not overreached: on June 5, 2009, national police attacked the gathered Awajun, trying to dislodge them. There was a pitched battle on the highway, natives with spears against police with automatic weapons that would leave a dozen police and ten protesters killed – although there are persistent rumors, difficult to substantiate, of a civilian death count in the hundreds. When news of the attack reached the indigenous fighters in the forest, they killed their police hostages.

Though the Baguazo episode ended in tragedy and bloodshed, in many ways the indigenous groups won. On screens across Peru and the world, viewers watched police in helicopters shooting Indians with spears. Across Peru, labor unions and local defense organizations held a general strike, bringing the nation to a halt. Ten days after the Baguazo, the Peruvian Congress repealed the new forestry laws. Force had succeeded where negotiation had failed.

Rondas in defense of the Marañon

Three years later, and a hundred miles upriver in Tupen, villagers feared that if they didn’t stand up they’d be washed away: literally.

In Tupen, locals attested that Chadin II engineers had come pretending to be tourists or environmentalists, and secretly moved forward their plans to dam the Marañon River. It took relatives from Celendin – a town outside the canyon, but still in the Cajamarca region – to give the people the news. “They said, they’re going to destroy your town,” Chavez reported.

But the relatives also had advice: organize yourselves.

In Cajamarca, rondas, peasant patrols modeled on those created to deter cattle theft, had become instrumental in the fight against the Conga copper mine, a project spearheaded by Colorado’s Newmont Mining Corporation. The Conga was the planned expansion of Newmont’s notorious Yanacocha goldmine, the second largest in the world, which Cajamarca residents say has polluted their water with mercury and cyanide. In 2011, violent protests organized by Cajamarca rondas forced Newmont to postpone the Conga expansion.

When Newmont began talking about reviving the project in 2014, a Cajamarca rondero, Gregorio Santos, won the regional presidency on an anti-Conga platform – despite being in jail for corruption. The Cajamarca activists “urged us to form a ronda to keep the surveyors out,” Chavez said. A friend urged them to close ranks, “because if you let the company in, you aren’t going to be able to kick them out. Don’t make the mistake we did. No one else is going to protect you.”

So the men of Tupen formed a ronda. Emblazoned on their custom-made uniforms, stitched in gold thread, are the words “No to Chadin II, No to Conga.” Several times the ronderos went in force to dislodge engineers from the survey site – a couple of times they found themselves facing down armed police.

“They were there with their guns and we were there with our truncheons,” Chavez said. “Finally the [police] comandante told me, I’m sorry, I didn’t know; they said you guys [the town] supported the dam. If you’re against it, we’ll leave.” But the ronda had to walk a tightrope – be aggressive enough to scare the company away, without provoking a police reaction, or cries of “terrorism,” which since the days of the Shining Path guerilla insurgency in Peru has been a code word for ‘leftist rebel.’

The ronda wasn’t only concerned about the environmental harm the dam would do: like the Awajun, the people of the Marañon Valley feared that corporate money would penetrate their rural community and pervert peasant democracy.

“They come in and pay people to talk in support of the dam at the community meetings,” said Doralina Esparza, a farmer near the town of Nueva Esperanza. That’s why Chavez called the schoolteacher who was aiding the Chadin II engineers a “traitor:” he was a town resident who could help give the dam company a foothold, which could make it very difficult to dislodge.

On the night the ronda captured the Oderbrecht engineers, Chavez had to decide what to do with them, amid calls for violence from Tupen villagers. “Those came from people with less understanding,” he said. “They didn’t realize that if we go too far we could lose everything.”

Instead, the patrolmen led the engineers into the yard outside the communal house. There they endured a bizarre punishment characteristic of the highland rondas: “We made them do pushups, squats, situps,” said Chavez. And the teacher? Chavez looked cagey. “He wasn’t so lucky. We’d warned him several times. We punished him physically.” He didn’t elaborate. Others said that the man had been beaten and thrown out of town.

Chavez’ younger brother, 22-year old Emerson, sat by listening to our discussion, then spoke: “We say no to violence, no to slavery,” Emerson said. Which is worse, I asked? He hesitated, then half-smiled. “Neither is good. But better violence than slavery.”

Tupen’s new schoolteacher, a baby-faced athletic man from the market town of Cumbes, downriver, was more direct. “The children are sometimes afraid; they cry in class about what’s going to happen to their land and families. I tell them, ‘Your parents won’t let the dam company in.’” He looked up, excited. “They’ll fight with sticks, stones, with guns if they have to!”

Meanwhile, on the other side of Peru, people were doing just that – fighting a violent, lopsided battle against multinational corporations and the national government.

Trouble with the Tia Maria mine

Since 2011, in the mountains of Arequipa in southern Peru, local unions and peasant groups have been campaigning to keep Newmont and its partner, Southern, a Mexican mining company, from opening the Tia Maria copper mine – Southern has a 50-year history of environmental harm associated with its Peruvian mining projects.

Peru’s current president, Ollanta Humala – elected on a tide of populism and local support after the Garcia years – has backed the mine.

Throughout May and June 2015, the Tia Maria conflict devolved into running battles between protesters and police, fighting that reached the center of Arequipa itself. Southern’s president called the protesters “anti-mining terrorists” – that word again, with its frightening association to the massacres of the civil war. Humala’s government called out the army, and hundreds of people were injured in the fighting. But again, violence worked: Southern announced a “pause,” although the project could be resumed at any time.

The Tia Maria protests played out all winter on media screens across Peru, watched by young people with the same morbid fascination as the Ferguson protests in the U.S. The fighting was often discussed in the context of the Baguazo. “Look at Tia Maria, look at the Baguazo,” said Pedro Pena, a kayaker and anti-dam activist organizing on the Marañon. “They show you have to fight.”

Emerson Chavez mused about going to Tia Maria to show solidarity. Over and over, I heard the same point made: “You have to resort to violence with this government; they just don’t listen to anything else,” said Maya Campos.

What is surprising about this last statement is that Maya – not her real name – works for the Ministry of Education, the national government. Her defiant views echo similar opinions I heard from half a dozen other young, lefty federal employees. This could be a sign, as with the rural land use protests, of growing dissatisfaction toward the Humala government, which over the last four years has sidelined progressives in its organization against a background of worsening social conflict. Since Humala took office in 2011, 63 people have been killed and 1,935 wounded in conflicts over land and resources.

It isn’t just young progressives who are worried about this trend: violence in response to megaprojects has gotten bad enough that even conservatives are beginning to argue that something has to be done. In a front-page interview on July 5, 2015, in the conservative El Comercio, well-known center-right economist Hernando de Soto argued that the country has lost $70 billion in mining investment thanks to conflicts like those around Conga and Tia Maria.

De Soto argued that mining resistance has been led by the remnants of the Shining Path, a tired accusation made by the right. But he also argued that Peru’s terrible land rights record has created an opening for the radical left: “Call me a useful idiot,” he told El Comercio, but the government has to give ground if it wants mining investment to continue. “It’s a problem of property, of who the land belongs to.”

Big projects like Conga and Tia Maria, he said, “are long term projects and can’t change day by day. What’s Peru going to do if 22 important mining projects are paralyzed and the government can’t do anything? What would you do as an investor? Would you invest in this country? It’s a problem they need to resolve.”

Humala’s prime minister, reached for comment by El Comercio, asked why Hernando De Soto was advocating meeting with terrorists.

- This report was originally published in Mongabay and is republished by an agreement to share content.

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At present, the main stem of the Napo River and most of its tributaries are free-flowing, with just two small 10 megawatt (MW) dams located on minor streams. That is all about to change, in a very big way, and the future of one of the last major free-flowing tributaries of the Amazon is at stake.

There are currently hydroelectric projects either proposed or under construction on nearly every tributary within the Napo watershed. In a 2012 paper, Finer and Jenkins reported that 19 dams were planned, including four large and two mega dams, one of which is the largest dam slated for the Ecuadorian Amazon, Coca Codo Sinclair. Only one of the Napo dams, Mazan, is outside Ecuador.

Hydroelectric Dams of the Napo River Basin. Dams are grouped by Status (Existing, Planned, and Advanced Planned) and size (2-99 MW, 100-999MW and >1000 MW electrical generating capacity). Advanced Planned corresponds to projects already under some type of contractual process. Map credit: Finer and Jenkins (2012)

Many ecologists are concerned by the plans for massive development. “Considering that the Napo River is one of the sixth largest Andean tributaries of the Amazon, altering its flood pulse dynamics and hydrological connectivity would affect not only one of the best preserved river systems in the basin, but also many of the ecosystems and species downstream, and the ecosystem services that they provide,” Jorge Celi told mongabay.com. Celi evaluates environmental impact assessments and Biodiversity Offsets for the Wildlife Conservation Society. He has been studying the Napo River since 2007.

With dams already being built or planned on other large Andean Amazon tributaries, such as the Madeira River and the Marañon River, projects like those intended for the Napo and other major Amazon tributaries “should be avoided,” said Celi.

The harm of headwaters dams

Well-planned hydroelectric projects can provide excellent, local, renewable energy sources. However, the unchecked proliferation of dams in the Andean Amazon region is of great concern to many scientists and conservationists due to potential environmental impacts including disruptions to free-flowing river connectivity, loss of biodiversity, deforestation, and ecosystem fragmentation.

Plunging over 480 feet (146 meters) in two spectacular drops, San Rafael Falls is the largest waterfall in Ecuador. The aesthetic qualities of this world heritage site in the UNESCO Sumaco Biosphere Reserve will be heavily impacted by the Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric project. Photo credit: Ecuadorian Rivers Institute.

Each of the Andean Amazon tributaries is a unique system with unique diversity patterns. However, those rivers are also part of a bigger, more complex pattern of ecosystem functionality. “Losing or damaging the connectivity between these systems and the main stem of the Amazon is like cutting veins or creating clots in a circulatory system,” Dr. Jorge Celi, a specialist who has studied aquatic ecosystems in the Napo River basin since 1992, told Mongabay. With enough blockages, eventually the entire system fails.

Amazonia is home to approximately 10 percent of all freshwater fish species in the world – roughly 1,500 species. “Considering this extreme level of concentration, especially in western drainages that originate in the Andes, changing flow regimes affect more [regional] species than they would anywhere else [on Earth],” said Kelly Swing, professor of environmental science at Universidad San Fransisco de Quito and director of the Tiputini Biodiversity Station.

“Many large Amazonian species, which are commercially important, must migrate great distances to complete their life cycles. The construction of dams anywhere along their routes impacts local economies as well as access to protein for many subsistence cultures,” Swing said.

Over 600 freshwater fish species have been identified in the Napo River watershed, and new species are discovered on each sampling trip, making the Napo one of the most biodiverse rivers in the world in terms of fish species in relation to river size.

Agoyan falls (right) is nearly completely de-watered by a hydroelectric project on the Pastaza River in Ecuador. Run-of-river hydroelectric projects often divert all of the flow from natural river channels causing severe impacts to aquatic ecosystems, disrupting ecological connectivity, and altering natural landscapes. Photo credit: Ecuadorian Rivers Institute.

“Disrupting the connectivity of the Napo River would isolate populations of an extremely diverse fish fauna and interfere with large scale fish migrations (that migrate from the estuary to the Andean headwaters for reproduction) and lower the genetic exchange of rare and threatened species like the pink river dolphin. Most of the animal protein of local inhabitants comes from fisheries that depend on this hydrological connectivity,” Celi told mongabay.com.

NAPO WATERSHED DAMS CURRENTLY UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Five hydroelectric projects are currently under construction in the Napo watershed:

The Victoria-Quijos, Quijos and Coca-Codo Sinclair hydropower projects are located in the Quijos River Valley, a world class paddle sports destination and a Napo River tributary. The Quijos becomes the Coca River, which joins the Napo about 100 kilometers (62 miles) below San Rafael Falls at the town of Francisco de Orellana (also known as “Coca”.

The Dúe project is on the Dúe tributary of the Aguarico River, which joins the Napo near the border with Peru. The Pusuno hydro project is on a direct tributary of the Napo River near Puerto Misahualli. Here’s a detailed rundown of each project:

The Coca Codo Sinclair Project:

The Coca Codo Sinclair (CCS) is the largest hydroelectric project in Ecuador and should be operating by 2018 with a 1,500 megawatt (MW) capacity. The dam is located in a seismically active area of notable geologic instability and volcanic risk, with active eruptions. Under normal operating conditions this project will dewater 60 kilometers (37 miles) of the Coca River, a world-class adventure tourism destination that boasts the largest waterfall in Ecuador, San Rafael Falls.

A new access road is opened up to a dam site for a small, run-of-river hydroelectric project on an Amazon tributary in Ecuador. Photo credit: Ecuadorian Rivers Institute.

Ecuadorian Rivers Institute Executive Director Matt Terry notes the dam’s problems: “The project is high cost, high risk, and over-dimensioned with respect to the available flow regime, and is located about as far away as possible from large population centers, and does not have an existing power transmission line.”

One way to minimize harm from dams is to develop them on rivers with existing hydroelectric projects, roads, and transmission line infrastructure. The CCS developers seem to have taken the opposite approach: Their project is being built in a roadless area, without transmission lines, far from population centers. The dam will require major new roads and extensive transmission lines to bring electricity to distant urban markets. Part of the new transmission line corridor will travel through an isolated roadless area, a natural heritage and biodiversity hotspot within the UNESCO Sumaco Biosphere Reserve.

“SINOHYDRO is building the CCS hydro project (diversion dam-tunnel-powerhouse) for the state-owned Coca Sinclair EP hydroelectric company, but the transmission lines were not included in the project studies or designs,” said Matt Terry. “The Chinese company Harbin Engineering was awarded an additional contract to build two, 500 kilovolt (kV), extra-high tension electric transmission lines to connect the CCS project to the nearest substation near Quito.” Each 500 kV transmission line needs a 60 meter-wide right-of-way, with new roads built to service them. “The transmission line was poorly planned, without stakeholder participation, and routed through protected areas to minimize the need to pay out compensations to private land owners,” Terry said.

The Quijos Project:

The 50 MW Quijos project includes a diversion dam, which will block both the Papallacta and the Quijos Rivers near the community of Cuyuja. Under normal operation, all water will be diverted from these rivers through tunnels, which will join into a unified penstock connected to the powerhouse located at the confluence of the two waterways.

Flowering “yutzos” grow along the Jondachi River in the Napo watershed in Ecuador. These, and other, riparian plants depend on the natural fluctuations and pulses of the river’s flow to maintain their habitat conditions. Photo credit: Ecuadorian Rivers Institute.

“This project will eliminate recreational use and tourism in the famed Papallacta River Gorge,” Terry explained. “However, the project is establishing a new road accessing the upper section of the Quijos River, which could open up a new section of river of great interest to the paddling community. The builder has not made any provisions to consider recreational use or tourism in its environmental flow regime or operation, which adds to the losing character of its proposition.”

The Quijos project includes the construction of a 138 kV power transmission line, which will run all the way to the main substation in Quito. This, despite the fact that the two 500 kV CCS project extra-high tension power transmission lines will pass near the Quijos powerhouse and substation, making the 138kV line redundant.

The Dúe Project:

The 49.5 MW Dúe project consists of an antiquated, river-wide diversion dam across the Dúe River. The dam diverts most of the river’s flow through a tunnel to a powerhouse located about 10 kilometers (6 miles) downstream, leaving little or no flow in a section of river now used for recreation and tourism, as well as subsistence fishing by native indigenous communities.

Hundreds of species of amphibians in the Napo Basin like this Eirunepes snouted tree frog (Scinax garbei) depend on the natural fluctuations and pulses of the river’s flow to maintain their habitat conditions. Photo credit: Ecuadorian Rivers Institute.

“The Dúe Hydroelectric project is somewhat of a quandary,” said Matt Terry. “The Dúe River drains off the back-side of the Reventador Volcano, one of the most active volcanoes in Ecuador, that is currently erupting. The project… will open new roads and a bridge across the Dúe River, which will eventually draw more people to settle in this high-risk area, which is also mostly within a designated protected area. The private developer reportedly has close ties to the Ecuadorian government and has received a number of incentives for investing in this project.”

The Dúe dam was also pushed forward by a consortium of government municipalities who want to use a portion of the water diverted for the hydro project as drinking water for approximately 100,000 inhabitants in the Sucumbios Province – people whose local surface water drainages and groundwater aquifers have been contaminated by oil development.

However, since the Dúe River drains an active volcano, its water quality has very high levels of metals and minerals, which will require extensive and costly treatment, and could lead to public health concerns, as well as issues regarding the long-term viability of the water supply for the local population. There’s also the susceptibility of the water supply to ongoing volcanic events. “After considering these observations, a prominent international finance institution rejected the application to provide a $20 million loan for the project earlier this year,” said Terry.

The Pusuno Project:

The Pusuno project is a series of 2 dams (26 MW and 21 MW capacity) that will purportedly dewater a direct tributary of the Napo River that flows from the Sumaco Napo-Galeras National Park.

According to Matt Terry, this stretch of river is a “high-quality, natural heritage resource with extraordinary value which is used for community-based ecotourism and adventure sports.” At least it will be, until the dam Pusuno dam is completed.

NAPO WATERSHED PROPOSED DAMS

In the 2012 Finer and Jenkins paper 10 of the 19 dams proposed for the Napo Watershed were classified as high impact. Mongabay.com has gathered information on some of these dams proposed for the area:

The Mazán Project:

The 540 MW Mazán project will provide renewable energy to the city of Iquitos, which is not connected to the Peruvian transmission grid and currently depends on thermal generating plants for its electricity.

The Piatua River forms part of a strategic, free-flowing, Andean Amazon watershed corridor in the Napo basin and draws tourists from around the world who contribute to a sustainable economy. Photo credit: Ecuadorian Rivers Institute.

“This costly and ambitious project would construct a river-wide dam across the Napo River about 80 kilometers (49 miles) above its confluence with the Amazon, disrupting ecological connectivity for the entire Napo watershed, threatening the subsistence fishing of native indigenous communities throughout the lower basin rivers, and opening up a new road access to prime forest reserves on the northern side of the Napo River,” reported Matt Terry.

The Mazan hydroelectric project (named after the Mazan River, a black water tributary of the Napo) would actually dam the main stem of the Napo River below its confluence with the Mazan River. It would divert approximately 85 percent of the river discharge through a canal into the Amazon River.

“Most importantly,” said Jorge Celi, this project would “largely affect the canal geomorphological dynamics, the flood regime of extensive floodplains and wetlands controlled by riverine inundation downstream of the dam and the confluence of the Napo with the Amazon River, and disrupt the connectivity of the river with tremendous impacts on biota, including many species of migratory fish and aquatic mammals, among other things.”

La Merced de Jondachi Project:

This hydropower project would disrupt the ecological connectivity of one of the last remaining high-quality, free-flowing watershed corridors in a critical transition zone in the UNESCO Sumaco Biosphere Reserve.

Additionally, it would eliminate recreational uses and tourism from one of the most important paddle sports destinations in Ecuador, which brings in over $1 million dollars to local economies. All of this in order to generate only 5 MW of hydroelectricity under normal operating conditions.

Visitors gather at an overlook to take-in the scenic beauty and awesome power of San Rafael Falls, an iconic feature of the UNESCO Sumaco Biosphere Reserve threatened to be de-watered by the Coca-Codo Sinclair run-of-river hydroelectric project. Photo credit Ecuadorian Rivers Institute.

This project is currently suspended due to legal opposition from local stakeholders and river users. The Ecuadorian Rivers Institute proposes an alternative vision for the river’s future, making it part of the proposed Jondachi-Hollín-Misahuallí-Napo Ecological Corridor, which could be included in the federal government’s new strategic plan to make Ecuador a major low-impact adventure tourism destination. The initiative is being spearheaded by the Ministerio del Deporte and the Ministerio del Turismo.

Santiago Miño of Ecuador’s Ministerio de Turismo told mongabay,com that he and his agency support this eco-tourism vision: “It is in our interest to declare the Jondachi River as a major tourist area and therefore try to keep the river in its purest form,” he said. “This year, the Ministry of Tourism of Ecuador has decided to make ‘Adventure’ an important priority,” especially since a quarter of the tourists who come to Ecuador come to participate in outdoor adventure activities.

“The [La Merced de Jondachi] project is high cost and high risk;” said Terry. “It will not recover its investment, including the interest on the loan, during its useful lifetime. The project is oversized, and has various deficiencies, including inadequate and incomplete studies and designs.”

The Jondachi-Sardinas Project:

The state-owned thermal generating company CELEC EP, also known as Termopichincha, is completely un-phased by the legal opposition to La Merced de Jondachi (LMDJ). The company maintains its intention to build not only the LMDJ hydro project on the upper section of the Jondachi River, but also the Jondachi-Sardinas hydroelectric project on the middle section of the same river.

Work is in progress on a diversion tunnel for a run-of-river hydroelectric project in the Upper Napo watershed. Photo credit: Ecuadorian Rivers Institute.

This they plan to do instead of pursuing other recommended projects in preferred sites on rivers that are of low natural resource quality, already contaminated, already developed, and close to larger population centers and existing transmission line infrastructure.

The Jondachi-Sardinas hydroelectric project would end recreational uses and tourism on the middle section of the Jondachi River which brings important economic benefits to local communities, and would disrupt the ecological connectivity of one of the last remaining high-quality, free-flowing watershed corridors in a critical transition zone between the Andes and Amazon. It would be a considerable loss in return for a mere 6 to 12 MWs of generating capacity.

The Baeza Project:

The 50 MW Baeza project is in the final phase of design, and would require construction of a diversion dam on the Quijos River just below the outflow of the Quijos hydropower project, and just below the confluence of the Papallacta and Quijos Rivers.

Nearly all stream flow would be diverted through an underground tunnel which would run alongside the north side of the Quijos River, effectively dewatering 2 prime sections of river near the town of Baeza – popular with whitewater paddlers from around the world. The Quijos River was the site of the World Rafting Championships in 2005.

Both the Quijos and the Baeza projects are located in an area with pronounced geologic instability and seismic activity, which threaten the integrity of these hydroelectric projects and make them high-risk investments.

The Chalupas and Langoa II Projects:

The Chalupas and Langoa II Projects would result in significant transcontinental water diversion for drinking water supply, irrigation and hydroelectricity generation for the central sierra valley.

They would both require the construction of new roads and infrastructure within a protected area, the Llanganates National Park, and allow major new development in an otherwise isolated and protected source watershed of the Napo main stem tributary to the Amazon.

Keep an eye on the water

Environmentalists argue that many of the 19 dams in the Napo Watershed are either unneeded or poorly planned. A far better, even ideal, strategy, they say, would be to build no dams on main stem Amazon tributaries, and designate and protect those streams as “free-flowing” waterways. Protected rivers under this plan would include the Marañon, Madeira, Putumayo, Ucayali and Napo rivers.

“Hydropower can be part of a sustainable energy future if designed and operated in a manner that avoids and minimizes impacts on vital river functions.” Jeff Opperman, Lead Scientist of The Nature Conservancy and of the Great Rivers Partnership Initiative told mongabay.com. “A scenario of dams located high in the [Andes Amazon] watershed and only on some of the tributaries might have the least amount of impact on the environment and still provide significant electricity benefits. The degree of the impact is very much a function of good siting and design.”

The future of the Napo Watershed hangs in the balance. Photo credit: Ecuadorian Rivers Institute.

Kelly Swing warns that: “As we continue to commandeer natural resources all over the world, we expand into the last remaining wild areas. With each passing day, nature is left with far less than scant decades ago. The proportion that we can actually take for ourselves without having disastrous impacts on the very resources we wish to exploit is undefined, but all indications suggest that we are nearing that tipping point.”

As mega-hydropower plans move forward in the Napo Watershed, a watchful, informed, and involved public could become an important factor in shaping Ecuador’s hydroelectric projects to be not only economically viable and developmentally useful, but ecologically sound and sustainable.

- This report was originally published in Mongabay and is republished by an agreement to share content.

Researchers with the University of East Anglia say the full extent of impacts to biodiversity of large hydroelectric dams in lowland tropical forest regions have been “severely overlooked.”

Mega-dams are being proposed the world over as sustainable development projects, even though there have been plenty of studies calling attention to the fact that the emissions savings from hydroelectric dams are drastically overstated. But this is one of the first times that such an extensive study has been done on the impacts to tropical forest wildlife biodiversity, and the results are stunning.

“Previous studies have shown that large dams result in severe losses in fishery revenues, increases in greenhouse gas emissions, and socioeconomic costs to local communities,” said lead author Dr. Maíra Benchimol in a statement. Benchimol received her PhD from UEA before moving on to the Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz in Bahia, Brazil.

“Our research adds evidence that forest biodiversity also pays a heavy price when large dams are built.”

Benchimol and her team studied the Balbina Dam, a 250-megawatt hydroelectric dam and power station on the Uatumã River in the state of Amazonas, Brazil. When the project was completed in the late 1980s to supply energy to the city of Manaus, it inundated 312,900 hectare (773,193 acres) of forest.

The Furnas Reservoir, the first major hydroelectric project in Brazil was completed in 1963 and flooded 1,473 square kilometers (569 square miles). This satellite image clearly shows how riparian habitat is inundated and ecosystems fragmented by large dams. More than 400 dams have been built, are under construction, or planned for Amazonia. Photo credit: NASA.

The creation of Balbina Lake, one of the world’s largest hydroelectric reservoirs, turned what was once a continuous landscape of pristine forest into an artificial archipelago of 3,546 islands. Aquatic and semi-aquatic species adapted to the river ecosystem were decimated, as were terrestrial populations in the lowlands that were flooded, which is to be expected when submerging that much forest under water.

But according to the study’s results, published in PLOS One this month, tropical dams also affect terrestrial and arboreal species in forest areas well above the maximum reservoir level.

Large vertebrates that live entirely on land or in the forest canopy, including mammals, large gamebirds and tortoises, have all but disappeared from most islands in Balbina Lake. “Approximately 70 percent of all native medium to large vertebrate populations were predicted to have succumbed to local extinctions,” on the islands write the study authors. Of the 3,546 islands, a mere 25 are likely to harbor at least 80 percent of the species surveyed by Benchimol’s team.

When tropical rivers, like this Amazon tributary, are dammed, vast tracts of forest are flooded and untold wildlife and plant diversity is destroyed. Photo credit: Rhett Butler.

Co-author Professor Carlos Peres of UEA told mongabay.com in an email that “the local extinction rates we uncovered are staggering,” all the more so because the Balbina landscape has been strictly protected for over 27 years by the largest biological reserve in Brazil (Reserva Biológica do Uatumã, established in 1990).

That means, according to Peres, that “we can consider our estimates highly conservative, because had this archipelago been created in any unprotected landscape, observed levels of species persistence would be far lower.”

Peres contends that the study’s findings should force mega-dam project planners to vastly increase estimates of aggregate biodiversity impacts. “We also know that dams in tropical forest areas erode forest carbon stocks, not only in inundated areas, but also in forest areas immediately affected by the reservoir,” he added.

“None of these sudden or gradual losses in both biodiversity and forest ecosystem services are properly taken into account in EIAs [Environmental Impact Assessments] of proposed dam infrastructure projects, even if those studies could be defined as impartial and properly conducted.”

This aerial photo of a Costa Rican dam shows how such projects shatter biological connectivity, preventing migrating fish and other aquatic species from moving either upstream or down, while flooding forests. Photo credit: Rhett Butler.

Over 10 million hectares (24.7 million acres) of Brazilian Amazon forests will be permanently inundated following the planned construction of new dams, potentially leading to a colossal impact on both terrestrial and aquatic biotas at regional scales, say the researchers. That’s doesn’t include the deforestation caused by hundreds of dams proposed or being built in Peru, Ecuador, and other Amazonian countries.

The solution, Peres said, is for licensing and approval of new dam projects to depend on a thorough, multidisciplinary EIA process “that has sufficient teeth to radically modify, mitigate, or block new dam proposals.”

Tropical river basins from the Amazon to the Mekong to the Congo are currently hotspots of dam-building activity. Research Professor Philip Fearnside of Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia in Manaus, Brazil, who was not involved in the PLOS One study but has done extensive research on the impacts of hydroelectric dams, agreed that the present findings are further cause for Brazilian authorities to reassess the push to build mega-dam projects as “green” energy sources.

“Biodiversity impacts are a major cost of Amazonian dams, and these impacts obviously have virtually no weight in decision-making on energy development in Brazil,” Fearnside wrote to mongabay in an email. “The monetary costs for dam construction (materials, labor, etc.) is what determines the choices, aside from the influence of political donations and corruption that are now coming to light.”

Over 10 million hectares (24.7 million acres) of Brazilian Amazon forests will be inundated by proposed dams, with colossal impacts on terrestrial and aquatic biota. Hundreds more dams are planned for the wider Amazon, Mekong, Congo, and other tropical watersheds. Photo Credit: Horácio Fernandes; licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

Fearnside has demonstrated in numerous studies that the carbon emissions savings of hydroelectric dams are wildly overstated, and that the costs of building mega-dams outweigh the benefits. The PLOS One study adds further heft to that argument.

The UAE’s Peres noted that, “The Balbina Dam, for example, flooded an area of well over 3,000 square kilometers [1158 square miles] and now only supplies about 10 percent of the energy demand of a single large city (Manaus).”

In other words, governments looking for sustainable energy solutions to growing their economy and the prosperity of their people should be looking elsewhere.

“The geopolitical strategy to deploy many more large hydropower infrastructure projects in regions like lowland Amazonia should be urgently reassessed,” the authors write in the report, “and we strongly advise that long-term biodiversity impacts should be explicitly included in pre-approval environmental impact assessments.”

- This report was originally published in Mongabay and is republished by an agreement to share content.