Climate change

Ho Chi Minh City is constantly flooded, while Bangkok continues to sink below sea level. It sounds like a science fiction movie set in Southeast Asia. But it’s what experts predict will happen within the next two to three decades in the major Vietnamese and Thai ...

Over the previous 12 months, rising environmental threats in Asia have had a lot to do with water—most significantly rising seas pushed by international warming. Southeast Asia is proving to be notably weak. New research present that local weather change and rising sea ranges will threaten the ...

Thailand should brace for serious water shortages when the hot season begins in March after a year with unusually little rainfall, one of the country’s top water management officials said Monday. Retention of water by dams in upstream areas of the Mekong River also is seen ...

The swirling currents of the once mighty Mekong, shrunk by drought and increasingly crippled by dams point towards an unprecedented crisis of water governance along the more than 4,900 kilometers of southeast Asia’s longest river. “This is the worst ecological disaster in history of the Mekong,” declared ...

The Mekong River Delta is lower than previously thought. Ground subsidence and rising sea levels threaten the lives of more than 21 million people who inhabit the region as well as Vietnam’s food security since the latter grows 56 per cent of the country’s rice. The ...

The Board of the Green Climate Fund (GCF), a major funder of climate projects, has approved a US$10 million project that’s expected to benefit 10 per cent of Laos’ population. The project is using nature-based solutions in four cities to build resilience towards ever-increasing floods ...

My grandfather turned his head and watched as his house was engulfed in the devastating water.  On a tiny boat, my grandparents and their neighbours carried some clothes wrapped in plastic sheets, leaving the village for higher ground. It was November 2, 1999, when strong cold ...

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said “there is no scientific basis” to the recent prediction that the Mekong Delta will be submerged in 30-50 years. The PM said Friday that a paper warning the Mekong Delta could be submerged underwater by 2050 lacks scientific backing. While admitting ...

On October 29, Laos unveiled a new dam in the country’s north. The 1.3-gigawatt Xayaburi dam sits on the Mekong River, which flows the length of the country. Laos plans to build nearly a hundred like it by 2020—many with direct funding and support from ...

HO CHI MINH CITY – It’s not quite the first thing on everyone’s minds in the booming financial center of Vietnam, but everyone kind of knows it might happen: Global sea levels pushed up by climate change threatens to flood the city by the year ...