Hydropower dams

The Lower Sesan 2 hydroelectric scheme was completed in northeast Cambodia in 2018. The reservoir flooded 300 square kilometers (116 square miles) upstream of the confluence of the Sesan and Srepok rivers, two tributaries of the Mekong. Villages, places of worship, ancestral burial grounds and ...

China is trying to wean its massive economy off coal and fossil fuels to meet its ambitious goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2060. So why is it trying to shut down as many as 40,000 hydropower plants? The answer lies deep in the nation’s troubled ...

Severe droughts are drying up rivers and reservoirs vital for the production of zero-emissions hydropower in several countries around the globe, in some cases leading governments to rely more heavily on fossil fuels. The emerging problems with hydropower production in places like the United States, China ...

For several years, US politicians have adopted the Japanese slogan of a “free and open Indo-Pacific,” calling for international law to apply over disputes in the South China Sea, where China is accused of acting aggressively. Earlier this month, during the East Asia Summit foreign ministers’ ...

A massive China-financed dam in Cambodia has “washed away the livelihoods” of tens of thousands of villagers while falling short of promised energy production, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Tuesday (Aug 10). The 400-megawatt Lower Sesan 2 dam in the kingdom’s north-east has sparked controversy ...

When investors in 2019 announced plans to build a massive hydroelectric dam on the Mekong River just upstream from Luang Prabang, the ancient royal capital of the former Kingdom of Laos, they drew a slew of criticism. So much criticism, in fact, that UNESCO—which has ...

The Chinese Embassy in Cambodia on Thursday refuted a false report published by Reuters, which claimed that Chinese hackers “stole Mekong [River] data from Cambodia.” The Reuters report, also published on Thursday, quoted the US Justice Department and two anonymous sources as saying that Chinese hackers ...

Buried in a long U.S. indictment accusing China of a global cyberespionage campaign was a curious detail: Among the governments targeted by Chinese hackers was Cambodia, one of Beijing’s most loyal Asian allies. The target of the hack, which two sources with knowledge of the indictment ...

Building a huge dam just upstream from a legendary UNESCO World Heritage site in an earthquake prone region poses serious risk to the local population and the town of Luang Prabang, warns a leading Thai earthquake specialist. Dr. Punya Churasiri, formerly the earthquake expert at Chulalungkorn University’s geology ...

Big hydropower plants are an important source of clean and cheap electricity for many countries in Southeast Asia. However, dams harm the environment and have dire consequences on local communities. Building more dams would therefore pose major trade-offs between electricity supply and environmental protection. A team ...