Disasters and emergency response

Prak Nhorn has no hope for his rice crop this year. “When I transplant seedlings, they die out. The salt is still in the soil,” said the farmer from Slab Ta Aon village, a riverside settlement roughly 150 kilometers southwest of Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, and ...

Laos’ Xayaboury province is advising people living alongside the Mekong River to prepare for possible flooding, while neighboring Thailand has warned its seven north-eastern provinces to brace for sudden overflows along the river until Thursday. The Lao province issued the alert following heavy rainfall in recent ...

Thailand’s National Water Command Centre is advising people living near the banks of the Mekong River in seven north-eastern provinces to brace for sudden overflows from today (Sunday) until Thursday. The centre said that heavy rain, triggered by Tropical Depression Mulan on August 11th and 12th in the ...

Upstream dams and sand mining have caused significant erosion along the Mekong River in western Laos, according to experts, devastating riparian communities in the impoverished Southeast Asian nation with high waters and powerful currents. But residents of those communities say they believe that other issues are to ...

Life has never been easy for farmers along Cambodia’s Tonle Sap Lake – the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia – and now water shortages, soil degradation and the rising costs for chemicals have added to their hardships. “Each season, the most challenging problems we farmers ...

The water levels of the Mekong and Tonle Sap has risen and is likely to continue to rise after more than a month of persistent rainfall, raising flood alerts in various parts of the country. Chan Yutha, Spokesman and Secretary of State of the Ministry of ...

The southernmost province of Ca Mau has announced a state of emergency following the erosion of 2.7 km (1.67 miles) of coastal embankment. The declaration came Wednesday with five dike sections along its western coast in Tran Van Thoi and U Minh districts on the verge ...

Thunderstorms, strong winds and high tides damaged over 800 houses in Ca Mau, Kien Giang and Bac Lieu provinces in the Mekong Delta in the past three days. The Committee for Disaster Prevention of Ca Mau Province said Tuesday that 752 houses and more than 340 ...

Abnormally high-water levels in the Mekong River at the end of May indicate that dams on the river must release less water during the dry season to protect the ecosystem, experts said at an online panel Monday.  Rain levels during the dry season this year have ...

Southeast Asia’s most productive agricultural region and home to 17 million people could be mostly underwater within a lifetime. Saving the Mekong River Delta requires urgent, concerted action among countries in the region to lessen the impact of upstream dams and better manage water and ...