Energy
Electricity production
Cleaning up a dirty industry: ASEAN is becoming more dependent on coal but it has an obligation to mitigate its environmental impact
Universal electricity access is a key pillar of ASEAN’s development goals. The regional bloc has committed to providing every citizen with an electricity supply by the early 2030s. To achieve this end, the region will need to increase its power capabilities by some 60% by ...
Oliver Ward
Dam Development Is ‘Silencing’ the Mekong River
In five days, the Xayaburi Hydropower Project on the Mekong River in northern Laos will formally begin operations. As the first dam on the lower Mekong mainstream, this marks a turning point for the Mekong River. The Mekong River is 4,350 kilometers (2,703 miles) long, ranked ...
Laos Urged to Cancel Latest Dam for Mainstream Mekong
Environmental rights groups are calling on Laos to cancel the latest hydro-electric dam it has approved for construction across the Mekong River, warning of dire consequences for the millions of people who rely on the waterway for a living. A six-month “prior consultation process” for the ...
Zsombor Peter
Two Large Mekong River Dams in Laos to Start Operations by End of Year
The first two of five planned large-scale Lao dams on the Mekong river are set to go online before the end of this year, amid controversy over their impact on the environment and people’s livelihoods. The Xayaburi dam in northern Laos will start operations on October ...
Water war risk rising on the Mekong
The Mekong River, a waterway that originates in China and snakes through five Southeast Asian countries, is emerging as a new security flashpoint, similar in dynamic to escalating conflicts in the South China Sea. China has built 11 dams and has plans for another eight along ...
David Hutt
Dams a threat to Mekong
Almost a decade ago, Vietnam was the most vocal neighbour in opposing Laos’ first dam on the Mekong River. Now, it has become a partner in the Lao government’s Luang Prabang dam project — its fifth on the mighty river. This new partnership is worrying, ...
Chinese Support Gives Laos an Edge Over Powerful Neighbor Vietnam
A Mekong River hydropower dam scheduled to open this month worries Vietnam because the country sits just downriver from it and would be threatened by lower water flows. Officials in Hanoi aren’t wildly protesting to the dam’s host country, Laos, however, because Vietnam knows Laos has ...
Ralph Jennings
‘Our River Was Like a God’: How Dams and China’s Might Imperil the Mekong
ON THE MEKONG RIVER — When the Chinese came to the village of Lat Thahae, perched on a muddy bend of a Mekong River tributary, they scrawled a Chinese character on the walls of homes, schools and Buddhist temples. No one in this isolated hamlet in ...
Hannah Beech
Dams destroy the Mekong and damage tourism
Every day thousands of tourists soak up life on the Mekong River, the seventh longest river in Asia. They take cruises, stay at boutique hotels or tuck into a grand lunch at a riverside restaurant. The river is the most compelling reason they travel to a ...
Don Ross
Will climate change spell the end of coal and hydropower in the Mekong?
This year has been rough for the 70 million people who call the Mekong River basin home: a severe drought rocked the region for months before yielding to deadly flooding. The Mekong slowed to its lowest level in recorded history, knocking the world’s largest freshwater fishery—Cambodia’s Tonle Sap Lake—out of ...
Skylar Lindsay
