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Challenges and opportunities for the governance of hydropower

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Abstract

More than 3,700 hydropower dams with capacities of over 1 MW are planned or under construction across the global south, repeating many past environmental and social problems. The World Commission on Dams issued guidelines in 2000, but major dam-building nations dismissed them as impractical. A quarter of a century later, the net benefits of large dams remain contested, yet the context has shifted. Climate change narratives, China’s leadership, private investment, environmental justice movements and multi-level governance now shape hydropower development. This landscape creates opportunities for better governance, strategic planning and community involvement, as well as for new research on hybrid systems, transboundary contexts and China’s political–economic dynamics.

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Fig. 1: A new hydropower scenario and governance opportunities.
Fig. 2: Distribution of large hydropower projects registered under the CDM between 2005 and 2020.
Fig. 3: Worldwide distribution of dam-related conflicts and illustrative cases of EJMs that succeeded in stopping projects and/or building alternative proposals.
Fig. 4: Opportunities ahead.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Socio-environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) for their support of a series of workshops on the theme of this Review that stimulated the participants to work together, and for the feedback from attendants of the panel on ‘Eco-economies: New proposals for a sustainable future’ at the 17th Biennial ISEE conference, Santa Marta. E.F.M. and M.C.L. thank the National Science Foundation for their support through an INFEWS project (number 1639115) that explored innovative hydropower solutions that did not require dams, and for a GCR Convergence award (2020790) that engaged local communities in the process of delivering renewable energy solutions on their own terms. C.C.A. thanks the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture for funding under the McIntire Stennis project (number 1026124). S.V.-T. thanks the project (number CNS2022-136063) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICIU/AEI /10.13039/501100011033) and by the European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR. S.V.-T. thanks A. Cañizares and M. Borrós for their technical support in the elaboration of the figures. This work contributes to ICTA-UAB ‘María de Maeztu’ Programme for Units of Excellence of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (number CEX2024-001506-M funded by MICIU/AEI /10.13039/501100011033).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science and Public Law and ICTA-UAB, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain

    Sergio Villamayor-Tomas

  2. Department of Community Sustainability, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    Maria Claudia Lopez

  3. School of Natural Resources and the Environment, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA

    Caroline C. Arantes

  4. Department of Asian and North African Studies, Lab on Area studies for Sustainability Transformations (LAST) and THE NEW INSTITUTE Center for Environmental Humanities (NICHE), Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Venice, Italy

    Daniela Del Bene

  5. Laboratory of Freshwater Ecology (ECOFRESH), Graduate School, National University of Battambang, Battambang City, Kingdom of Cambodia

    Ratha Chea

  6. James Madison College, Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    Daniel B. Kramer

  7. School of Geography and Sustainable Development, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK

    Christopher Schulz

  8. Centre for Development, Environment and Policy, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, London, UK

    Giuseppina Siciliano

  9. Department of Anthropology, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA

    Bryan Tilt

  10. Center for Global Change and Earth Observations, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    Emilio F. Moran

Authors

  1. Sergio Villamayor-Tomas
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  2. Maria Claudia Lopez
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  3. Caroline C. Arantes
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  4. Daniela Del Bene
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  5. Ratha Chea
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  6. Daniel B. Kramer
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  7. Christopher Schulz
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  8. Giuseppina Siciliano
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  9. Bryan Tilt
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  10. Emilio F. Moran
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Contributions

S.V.-T., M.C.L., C.C.A., D.D.B., R.C., D.B.K., C.S., G.S., B.T. and E.F.M. contributed to the conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis, data curation, writing of the original draft, review and editing, and visualization.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to
Sergio Villamayor-Tomas.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Sustainability thanks AFM Kamal Chowdhury and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Table 1 (download PDF )

Selection of environmental justice movement cases that have resulted in dams being stopped, amended or replaced with alternative solutions (data from ref. 61).

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Villamayor-Tomas, S., Lopez, M.C., Arantes, C.C. et al. Challenges and opportunities for the governance of hydropower.
Nat Sustain (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-026-01782-2

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