Environment and natural resources
Deforestation threatens the Mekong, but new trees are growing in surprising places
More than 70 million people live in Southeast Asia’s Mekong region, where trees and forests have multiple benefits for people and biodiversity. Trees lock soils in place, preventing landslides and protecting crops, while forests help regulate rainfall and water cycles. Wood and other forest products provide millions ...
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, ...
Toxic wait must end
The change in the composition of the National Hazardous Substances Committee (NHSC), which regulates use of three harmful farm chemicals — paraquat, glyphosate and chlorpyrifos — could add complications to a move to have the trio banned. The new composition under the Industry Ministry permanent secretary ...
Japan pouring US$17.8 million into Luang Prabang water supply upgrade
The Japanese government is funding a grant aid project worth US$17.8 million to improve the water supply system in Luang Prabang city, under a grant agreement signed in Vientiane on Thursday. The agreement was signed by the Director General of the Department of International Cooperation of ...
‘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
Better protection sought for Thailand's helmeted hornbill
Time is running out for Thailand’s dwindling population of helmeted hornbills thanks to poaching of the exotic birds for the ivory-like casques atop their big red and yellow beaks. The species, known by the scientific name Rhinoplax vigil, is listed as “critically endangered” by the International ...
Busaba Sivasomboon
Mekong Coffee Growers Struggle with Drought and a Warming Climate
In villages around the city of Buon Ma Thuot, Vietnamese farmers wait for the monsoon that normally arrives in April or May. “The fruits look ripe outside, but the bean is crispy and small because there was not enough rain,” says 28-year-old Y Bel Eban from Krong village, ...
Karoline Kan
Threat to the Mekong River is Critical, Critics Say
It is starting to appear that nothing can save the 800,000 sq. km Mekong River basin, which provides vital sustenance for as many as 100 million people, from environmental depredation from dams all along the 4,350 km length of the mighty river that feeds it. Over ...
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
