Geo-Protesting Takes on Dams

Chileans battling plans for large-scale dams in their Patagonia region are taking advantage of an unlikely tool to raise awareness, Google Earth. Now, when you take flight through Google Earth to southern Chilean Patagonia expect to see widespread protests.Marcos Dollfus, a geography student at Chile’s Concepcion University, recently geo-localized the rivers where big dams are planned to be built in the region, putting placemarks on Google Earth in each spot. At each river where a dam is planned, there is a small placemark containing an image of one of the giant electric transmission towers the Canadian-owned Transelec company wants to build to connect the power from the dams in the far south to capitol Santiago, 1,200 miles to the north. Tap on the placemark, and you see a photo of the river, the name of the company planning the dam, and some text explaining the conflict. There is also a link to the webpage of the campaign Patagonia Without Dams.

Said Dollfus, this “shows once again, how cyberactivism reaching people on a massive scale is possible using only the minimum elements available on the Internet.”

Other groups have also been taking advantage of the Google Earth Outreach program for nonprofits since it began a few years back. Google also has a host of other ways it assists nonprofits, such as tools to collect donations online, grants, website tools, more. Worth checking out.

Photo courtesy of Marcos Dollfus, Google Earth.