Wan Pardede News Today

A hydropower dam in Indonesia that would help cut carbon emissions threatens a fragile ecosystem. An environmentalist explains why it’s worth it.

By Dyna Rochmyaningsih Contributor Emmy Hafild co-founded Indonesia’s most prominent environmental NGO in the 1990s. Today she’s an adviser to a private company building a hydropower dam along the Batang Toru river ecosystem on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, which relies on coal to produce most of its electricity. Ms. Hafild accepts that there is a trade-off between producing hydropower and the disruption of the surrounding ecosystem, but argues that this project is necessa...