Drought

Facebook and the Mekong River Commission (MRC) launched a collaboration initiative Monday to provide early flood alert and drought monitoring information to Mekong nations. The MRC stated it has installed 22 hydrological stations along the main channel in the lower Mekong River basin to monitor and ...

PM Prayut Chan-o-cha is set to attend a summit on Mekong River with China and five other riparian countries next week, the foreign ministry said Friday. The 3rd Mekong-Lancang Cooperation Summit will be held entirely online on Monday due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, ministry diplomat ...

Hun Sotharith recalls when he moved to Cambodia’s Tonle Sap Lake to become a fisherman. It was the early 1990s, and the freshwater swamp forest where he fished was so dense that it could take Sotharith, a former soldier, a day and a half to ...

China’s extensive damming of the upper Mekong River has reduced water flows, threatening downstream countries Cambodia and Vietnam with environmental harm and food shortages, said experts in advance of a summit meeting of the multilateral  Mekong-Lancang Cooperation group. The summit, to be held on Aug. 24 ...

As US-China tensions turn towards the Mekong River and its dams, the area near Laos’ latest hydropower project on the river is already seeing major controversy around existing dam projects. The Lao government is preparing to start construction on the Luang Prabang Dam, a 1,460-megawatt (MW) project that will be ...

In his book, River of Time, Jon Swain evoked brilliantly the heady beauty of Indochina and the great Mekong Delta in the very south of Vietnam, where the river finally meets the South China Sea. He also captured the terrifying uncertainty as the Vietnam War came to ...

The latest reports from the Lower Mekong Basin are cause for growing concern that another period of drought will succeed that of 2019, affecting Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. Expected rainfall from late May through June and July has not arrived, and the level of ...

Farmers in the Mekong Delta are chopping down hundreds of hectares of durian trees that were lost to drought and saltwater intrusion. For years Le Van Thoi has earned VND600-800 million ($25,800-34,400) a year from his durian farm in Cai Lay Town in Tien Giang Province. Thanks ...

Chinese dams aren’t the problem causing droughts for downstream nations along the Mekong River – they are part of the solution – says a Chinese study released in July. The study is an attempt to pour water on claims by a rival US-backed investigation that blamed dams ...

A Thai dam developer has begun clearing land for a large-scale Mekong River dam near the ancient Lao capital Luang Prabang before signing a hydropower sale pact required for approval, raising concerns from downstream communities already hit hard by Laos’ aggressive damming of the vital ...