Damocracy is produced by Doğa Derneği, in collaboration with other founding members of the Damocracy movement: Amazon Watch, International Rivers, RiverWatch, Gota D’água (Drop of Water) Movement, Instituto Socioambiental (ISA) and Movimento Xingu Vivo para Sempre (MXVPS). Director is a Canadian environmental documentarist Todd Southgate.
Current state of the Xingu River after construction of the Belo Monte Dam.
Although one of the main focus of the documentary is the famous historical human settlement Hasankeyf threatened to be destroyed by dam construction, it sucessfully gives the bigger picture of the ecological and societal damage caused by dam constructions globally. Turkey is one of the worst, occupying 121st place for biodiversity and habitat conservation among 136 countries included in Yale Environmental Performance Index published in 2012. Thousands of dams planned to be built. Some of which already started to destroy local economies and nature in the mountains of the Blacksea region covered by temperate rainforests. One of the sister NGO’s Kuzey Doga is in a bitter struggle with the government to prevent construction of a dam on Aras River which will destroy one of the most important bird habitat on Africa-Eurasia migration route.
Turkey harbors quite a few RAMSAR sites that have satisfied strict criteria of the international convention. Thanks for the pressure groups such as Doga Dernegi and Kuzey Doga the number and quality of protected areas struggle to exist in Turkey.
2 Comments