Europe is on a river barrier-demolition spree. And it has to do it more vigorously to meet a target of making 25,000 kilometres of rivers barrier-free by 2030.
Twenty-three countries demolished 542 barriers in 2024, according to data compiled by the Dam Removal Europe (DRE), a coalition of six organisations like the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), The Rivers Trust, The Nature Conservancy and the European Rivers Network.
With one dam for every kilometre of rivers, European countries are increasingly joining this drive to enable rivers to flow free, and to restore back the original aquatic ecosystems.
The barrier removal number last year was the highest since the drive started in 2020. This year, 11 countries removed 101 barriers like dams, weirs, culverts and sluices on rivers. In the next three years, it picked up momentum: By 2023, 15 countries had removed 487 barriers.
The drive in Europe is happening in context of global concerns over ecological impacts of increasing blocking or damming of rivers. The human-made barriers on rivers are one of the earliest interventions in natural ecosystems to harness benefits for human societies.
On July 10, 2025, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released its Frontiers 2025: The Weight of Time. The annual report flags emerging environmental issues. This year’s analysis identified ‘barrier removal for restoration’ as one of the issues.
“While dams have provided significant benefits, they have also disrupted indigenous and fishing communities, while damaging river ecosystems,” noted the UNEP flagship report. It called for a global effort to let rivers flow free.
“Removing dams and barriers is an increasingly accepted strategy to restore river health, and has gained momentum, particularly in Europe and North America, where large, older dams that have become unsafe, obsolete, or economically unviable are being removed,” the report noted.
Some 62,000 large dams and millions of small barriers have been built on rivers across the world. It is estimated that European rivers have over 1.2 million in-stream barriers. “By 2030, 89 per cent of global river volume will be moderately to severely impeded by fragmentation, a sharp rise from 43 per cent in 2010,” the UNEP report noted, citing a study.
Fragmenting or stopping rivers have significant impacts on the ecosystems, the foremost being free movement of fishes. “While humans have benefitted significantly from these services, nearly all barriers modify water flow and temperature, habitat quality and quantity, downstream sediment transport, and fish movement. Inland fisheries that communities depend on as local food sources can be devastated following the construction of a barrier, particularly large dams,” said the report.
In 2000, the European Union recognised river barriers as an anthropogenic pressure under its Water Framework Directive. This was after studies showed that one-fifth of the Union’s surface waterbodies were affected by barriers like dams and weirs.
In July 2023, the European Parliament adopted the “Nature Restoration Law”. It mandated 25,000 kilometres of rivers to be barrier-free by 2030.
Jelle de Jong, the chief executive of WWF Netherlands, welcomed the progress in Europe saying, “Rise in removals showed that communities and governments were increasingly seeing the benefits of reconnecting and restoring rivers.” WWF is one of the six coalition partners that constitute DRE.
As the removal of river-barriers picks up in other places like the US, it also provides an opportunity to gauge how such human intervention — lasting up to 50 years depending on a barrier’s life — impacts the local ecosystems. On the other hand, post-demolition of barriers, there will be opportunities to learn how the ecosystem comes back to its natural self.
“In much of Africa, Asia and South America, where barrier building far outpaces removal, hydropower dams are seen as a green option to provide energy that supports the needs of growing populations. This infrastructure can be carefully designed and placed on the landscape in ways and locations that minimize disturbances to river health,” suggested the authors of the UNEP report.