Plans to spend UN money on large dam projects have been slammed by environmentalists.

The UN set up a green climate fund during the Paris climate talks to mobilise $100 billion a year by 2020 for innovative and transformational projects for poor countries.

The fund’s board has earmarked $AU 179 million for large dam projects in Nepal, Tajikistan and the Solomon Islands.

But green groups have written to the board to argue that the Tajik project was just the patching up of a decrepit Soviet-era dam, and the Solomon Islands plans would see forests flooded and vegetation destroyed.

Andrea Rodriguez, a senior attorney for the Inter-American Association for Environmental Defence, said “tremendous negative impacts” on ecosystems and indigenous people would result.

“Large dams are not suited to adapt to climate risks because they alter seasonal patterns, by storing floods and increasing dry period flows,” she told the Guardian.

“Large infrastructure does not guarantee development or climate solutions.”

Their protest letter allegedly states that 19 million fish die each year due to the turbines at the 126MW Soviet-built Qairokkum plant in Tajikistan.

Additionally, in Nepal they argue that the 216MW Upper Trishuli-1 project “would have no transformational impact”.

“It faces severe climate and disaster risks, and it would have significant impacts on indigenous communities – and the environment – that have not been adequately studied, nor mitigation plans prepared,” the letter states.

Nine projects worth $AU 1.1 billion will be discussed by the fund’s 24-person board in a meeting in Songdo, South Korea, this week.

Other projects include a programme to help Ethiopian women deal with ongoing drought, and a range of water irrigation and conservation projects in Morocco.