“World's largest hydro companies persist in failing the environment, community rights”, 9 December 2019

A new report by International Rivers finds the world’s largest hydropower corporations fail to meet basic social and environmental standards in preparing and constructing new dams.

‘Watered Down’ provides an in-depth look at how policy meets practice in seven flagship dam projects spanning Africa, Asia, and South America from some of the world’s largest hydropower firms. The study focuses primarily on prominent Chinese state-owned enterprises – which account for two-thirds of all large dams built globally – among them Sinohydro International, PowerChina Resources, and China International Water and Electric, a subsidiary of China Three Gorges.

Through research, interviews, and site visits undertaken between 2016-19, International Rivers found:

- Due diligence processes for vetting new projects is lacking.

- Corporate policies fall short of accepted international social and ecological standards, such as those set by the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation.

- Corporations routinely compromise social and environmental objectives and disregard their own stated policies to keep to schedule and on budget.

- Public disclosure and consultation around environmental and social impact assessments is uniformly below international standards…

Companies argued that such issues are beyond their mandate as construction firms, and laid responsibility for issues such as unpaid compensation for displaced communities and non-disclosure of key documents with host governments. The report emphasizes the need for companies to insist upon adherence to internationally-accepted standards to prevent adverse impacts, but also to protect companies’ reputations…

[All companies assessed for this report were notified about their intention to conduct this review and were given opportunities to respond to their findings and observations, responses from the companies are included in the report.]