‘Us’ vs ‘them’: The politics dictating the rise and fall of the Mekong
Cracked riverbeds, empty fishing nets and, snaking its way through the parched landscape, a beautifully clear, blue-tinted river.
This was the view of the mighty Mekong River earlier this year, when record-low water levels revealed a striking vulnerability to the main artery of Southeast Asia, a 4,350km feature that plays a role in everything from food security to national defence and energy production.
Nobody who knew the river and saw it sitting low in its banks, turned Caribbean blue in places due to a lack of life-giving muddy sediment, disputed that something was amiss.
ANDREW HAFFNER
