Balkan Rivers

Known as the Blue Heart of Europe, the Balkans is home to the last free-flowing rivers in Europe and hosts immense biodiversity. But these waterways are under threat from an onslaught of thousands of small dams and diversions that fragment and dewater these last wild rivers, including by draining or enclosing them completely. In Serbia alone, some 800 dams are planned. These dams threaten imperiled species such as marble, softmouth and prespa trout; the Endangered huchen (or Danube) salmon; the Endangered Balkan lynx; and the Endangered white-clawed crayfish. We must act urgently to save the Blue Heart of Europe!

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Earth Law Center has joined the global campaign calling for the government of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina to permanently protect the country’s last wild rivers from small hydropower projects. Bosnia and Herzegovina rivers are facing imminent destruction due to 463 small hydropower projects currently under construction or being planned. But it is not too late to change course!

Conservation organizations around the world—including Earth Law Center, Riverwatch, International Rivers, Freshwater Life, and others—are calling for Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina to permanently ban new small hydropower plants. This would set a powerful example for other countries in Eastern Europe to protect some of their last free-flowing rivers. Read the press release on this campaign here and learn more about the importance of these rivers here.

Grant Wilson, Executive Director of Earth Law Center, made the following statement to the IUCN on the campaign:

Hydropower is not truly 'renewable' energy because it permanently devastates aquatic ecosystems and species, and therefore should not be part of Europe's renewable energy future. We urge the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina to follow through with its ban of small hydropower plants in order to create a future in which rivers and local communities thrive together in harmony.

SERBIA

Earth Law Center, Earth Thrive, and International Rivers have launched a campaign to establish the Rights of Nature in Serbia with a focus on the rights of rivers. Our initiative seeks to permanently protect sensitive Balkan rivers by establishing their fundamental rights. Towards this goal, Earth Law Center will defend the rights of rivers in Serbia through the European Tribunal for Aquatic Ecosystems.

We must also create specific standards to enforce the rights of rivers. Therefore, we have also created specific policy goals to enforce the rights of Balkan rivers:

We call upon Serbia and other Balkan countries to: 

  •  Pass a national law and/or constitutional amendment recognizing the rights of rivers & creating a independent body of legal guardians to represent those rights;

  •  Implement the optimum fundamental right of rivers to flow vis-à-vis minimum downstream flows;

  •  Freeze all new hydroelectric dam projects until the cumulative impacts of these dams can be assessed, including through a Rights of Nature analysis;

  •  Adopt the ‘Birds’ and the ‘Habitats’ EU Directives to close the current legal gap; and

  • Close the loophole excluding EIAs for hydropower projects below a 2 MW threshold and require all EIAs for hydroelectric projects to be cumulative, basin-wide assessments of dam impacts looking at integrative holistic ecosystem.

We call upon the European Union to: 

  •  Recognize the Rights of Nature at the EU level with a focus on the rights of rivers and watersheds;

  • End the classification of new hydropower as “renewable energy” towards renewable energy targets under the Renewable Energy Directive;

  •  Formally recognize, such as through the Renewable Energy Directive, that hydroelectric power is only “renewable” in the sense that the water is not permanently used, but from a whole ecosystem perspective, hydropower is not renewable because it permanently degrades and destroys ecosystems, species, etc.; and

  • End all subsidies for small hydropower.

Learn more about our efforts in the Balkans.

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