Why hydropower’s human rights problem may be insurmountable, 11 July 2022

...“There is a huge amount of untapped hydropower potential around the world, but the myriad of controversies that time and again crop up in these projects is making them unattractive for investors,” says Harry Verhoeven, senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy, Columbia University, US.

He adds that there is a pattern of benefits being “massively overstated” and costs being significantly understated. “Then there is the long-standing track record of hydropower fostering corruption, displacement, discrimination, racism [and] deliberate targeting of certain people to benefit others,” he says. This comes on top of the emerging concern that completed hydropower projects will not be as effective as planned as a result of climate change affecting weather patterns...

A recent policy report from Boston University highlights how China, which has a massive domestic hydropower industry, is picking up slack left by Western financiers less willing to invest in hydropower in recent years. 

However, Verhoeven believes that even the communist superpower, hardly known for its defence of human rights, will become less willing to risk its reputation overseas by investing in hydropower. The country’s long-standing foreign policy principle of ‘non-interference’ in territorial interests and integrity was, for example, recently compromised due to its involvement in North Africa’s Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam project, which has led to conflict between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan.