Disasters

It is now early on in the rainy season and the water volume on the Mekong River should have been high. But water levels on certain stretches of the international river, which runs from China through Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, have reached their ...

The Royal Irrigation Department (RID) is speeding up efforts to mitigate the impacts of the looming drought after water levels in several major reservoirs fell below the levels of last year. Eighteen major reservoirs are holding less than 30% of their storage capacity including Pasak Jolasid ...

The water level in the Mekong river is the lowest level in 10 years, according to local media reports. The water level, 2.60m, is about 10 metres below the spill-over point on the Mekong river bank, which is 13m high. In the same period last year, ...

The Mekong Delta loses 300 hectares of land each year because of river and coastline erosion, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD). “The total land area lost in the last 10 years has reached over 3,000 hectares,” Tang Quoc Chinh from the ...

Droughts are slow-onset disasters that trigger significant environmental impacts, including loss in agricultural productivity across the globe. The Lower Mekong region is no exception. Recently, Vietnam has been contending with droughts and resulting damages, especially in 2015 when it suffered heavy losses, especially in rice ...

Vietnam culled more than 1.7 million pigs as African swine fever spread across the country, with officials warning the disease may penetrate sizable commercial farms next. About 5% of the nation’s pig population has been culled as the number of infected provinces and cities increased to ...

UK scientists will head to Vietnam again to study the economic and environmental benefits of natural flood defences. Researchers, led by environmental economist Dr Tobias Börger from the University of Stirling, will study the effectiveness of blue and green infrastructure (BGI) – which include wetlands, urban ...

For the more or less 10 million people living in Thailand’s capital city of Bangkok, flooding is a common and recurring phenomenon. This is partly due to the city’s geographic location at the southern end of the Chao Phraya River Basin, as well as its ...

More than 50 people were feared dead after a landslide in northern Myanmar engulfed jade miners while they were sleeping, the latest deadly accident in a notoriously dangerous industry. The accident took place near Maw Wun Kalay village in Hpakant township at about 11:30pm local time (17:00 GMT) on Monday when a ...

Due to a prolonged drought, seawater has intruded deep into rivers in the Mekong Delta, leaving thousands of households facing a water shortage. Freshwater is sold in certain areas for VND200,000 ($8.6) per cubic metre, and local authorities use tanker trucks to deliver water to households.  For ...