Karahnjukar dam and power plant, Icelandic Highlands
The largest environmental movement on Iceland during the 1990s was about finding alternatives against a plan by the government to build a huge hydropower complex in Eastern Iceland, damning two out of three major glacial rivers running north from the Vatnajoekull Glacier, destroying waterfalls, drowning valuable highland areas and wilderness. This resulted that only one main river was damned and the Karahjukar power plant for an aluminium smelter in Reydarfjoerdur was build. However the Icelandic government protected parts of the highlands by establishing the Vatnajökull national park. And there is still a movement on Iceland aiming to protect the entire wilderness of the Icelandic highlands, encompassing some 40 per cent of Iceland's total land mass of about 100,000 square kilometres.
Year: 2014
From album: Vatnajökull National Park and the protection of the Icelandic Highlands
Photographer: Peter Prokosch