hydropower

As the Georgian government moves ahead with its plans for increasing the country’s hydropower capacity, local communities are being sidelined in the process of compensation payments.

It’s been a hot summer all over the Balkans. A heatwave called Lucifer struck Albania, drying up its river and causing numerous forest fires. Since Albania relies 90% on hydropower for its electricity, the drought resulted in a significant drop in production, forcing Albania to import 80 percent of it electricity.

An assessment of livelihoods of people to be affected by the Nenskra hydropower plant in Georgia contains mistakes that will lead to significant losses for locals.

Despite the remote location, the culture festival We Are Svaneti brought together people from three continents and helped young Svans to become aware of their communities’ unique traditions.

The disproportionate impacts that the Nenskra hydropower project in Georgia will have on women are not being assessed by the project company, in spite of its financiers’ standards.

Mountain villages in the country’s northeast protest for changes to the routing of high voltage lines in a series of local protests.

Enver Hoxha, the former communist dictator in Albania, ruled in such a bizarre way that he found himself ostracised by other communist rulers. Among others he flooded the country of 3 million people with 750 000 concrete bunkers. Those bunkers were built ignoring people, nature but also military rules - as some of them were facing each other.

We are passing through the canyon of the river Vrbas, in north-west Bosnia-Herzegovina. I am looking through a car window, mouth wide open in awe. While I look up to the rocky, edgy peaks hundreds of meters above and down to the heavenly blue river, I am wondering why anyone would want to dam this river, flood the canyon and destroy its beauty.

Then again, rather than seeing beauty, hydropower companies see wasted water resources, or in the words of a Bosnian official “euros flowing away in vain.”