Hydropower dams

China on Thursday signed an agreement with the Mekong River Commission (MRC) to share year-round data on the flow of its portion of the vital waterway amid concern that Chinese dams may be causing drought downstream in Southeast Asia. A push for more data from China’s ...

  Seen from the Thai side, facing the jungle-covered hills of the Laotian bank, the great river bordering the two countries ebbs continuously, like a body of water symbolizing the eternal course of life. The melancholic and beautiful flow of the Mekong, so steady and slow, ...

The sun cast its warmest rays before dusk across the farms on Koh Pnov, one of the Mekong River islands substantial enough to survive the river’s seasonal rise and fall. Though usually drenched by the late afternoon showers of rainy season, on a bright August ...

Authorities have been doing too little to regrow trees they felled to make way for hydropower projects, experts said. Growing trees is the most effective way to control floods and prevent erosion in downstream areas, Dao Xuan Hoc, chairman of the Vietnam Water Resources Development Association, ...

The Mekong River in Southeast Asia flows for 4,350 kilometers from China to Vietnam through Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia. China’s construction of large hydropower dams to feed the country’s growing energy needs is causing problems downriver, including dire impacts on the waters and fertile ...

The Mekong River Commission (MRC) released new guidelines yesterday assessing the risks of hydropower development through an assessment of five major themes. This is the third volume of Hydropower Mitigation Guidelines, and the themes include river hydrology and downstream flows, geomorphology and sediments, water quality, fisheries ...

“Water rises so fast and drops so fast because the water doesn’t flow naturally. It has huge impacts on us. It’s hard to catch any fish, and the fish cannot lay eggs,” says Prayoon Saen-ae, 62, head of a local fishermen group in Chiang Khan ...

Hydropower is the world’s largest source of energy generation. It is commonly assumed that hydropower reservoirs retain nutrients, and this nutrient reduction significantly reduces primary productivity, fishery catches and food security downstream. An international research team, including Prof. Jef Huisman from the University of Amsterdam, ...

More than a hundred families in central Laos’ Bolikhamxay province who were displaced by the Nam Theun 1 dam have decided to accept compensation, putting an end to a standoff that lasted 17 months, sources in Laos told RFA. Disputes over compensation by displaced villagers have ...

Germany has provided equipment to the Mekong River Commission to monitor the environmental impacts of two mainstream dams on the lower reaches of the Mekong River. The equipment, worth around $600,000, meant to help monitor the impacts of Laos’s Xayaburi and Don Sahong dams, was handed ...