Disasters and emergency response

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 ...

A new Mekong river dam in Laos’ Luang Prabang province will displace up to 465 families this month, the latest in the continuing trend of hydropower projects forcing villagers to relocate all over the country. Residents of 10 villages in Luang Prabang’s Chomphet district must be ...

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 recent media report on the Mekong River which contained false accusations against China ignores the joint efforts made by China, Thailand and other relevant parties to promote cooperation on Mekong water resources for the benefit of the people in the region. These accusations mislead ...

Recently, a coalition of civil society groups, which has monitored development on and along the Mekong River, issued a frightening statement. Fluctuations of river flows during the past three decades have been at record highs, they said. That is a big deal for people whose livelihoods ...

The Lao government is embarking on an plan to inspect all 55 dams in the country nearly one year after the collapse of a saddle dam that caused a disaster described as Laos’ worst flooding in decades. The disaster occurred on July 23, 2018, when a ...

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 ...

Although the Thừa Thiên-Huế Province People’s Committee announced it had cracked down on illegal gold mining along the upper part of the Đắkrông River in A Lưới District, the river water is still polluted, affecting people living downstream. Lao động (Labour) newspaper on Wednesday reported that gold ...

The so-called “death jars” of Laos could be more widespread than previously thought. Australian archaeologists and Lao Government officials have reported discovering 15 new sites containing 137 of the massive stone jars, which are believed to be around 1000 years old. Experts believe the jars are related ...

The Mekong Delta has the highest rate of drowning in the country, particularly in Dong Thap province, where the number of deaths due to drowning is 10 times higher compared to that of dengue fever and hand, foot and mouth disease combined. Over the years, though ...