News

Earlier this week, Myanmar and China formally agreed to begin work on an important section of a long-delayed railway project running from Yunnan province to the Indian Ocean. On January 10, the state-run Myanmar Railways and the China Railway Eryuan Engineering Group (CREEG) signed an agreement to conduct ...

Thailand’s economic slump during the coronavirus pandemic led to a drop in electricity demand, with Thai officials estimating power reserves currently at 50% over total capacity.  However, despite the Thai surplus, hydroelectric dams are still being developed next door in Laos, Thailand’s top provider of electricity. Critics say the dam projects are not driven ...

As a struggling least developed country, Laos stands alone when it comes to ignoring common sense and pushing ahead with infrastructure development that it can ill-afford and is unlikely to deliver its much hoped-for rags to riches outcome. Energy and Mines Minister Sinavav Souphanouvong made that ...

One of the two parts of a mega irrigation system in southern Vietnam’s Mekong Delta will start operation next month in Kien Giang Province. Construction of the system worth VND3.3 trillion ($142.17 million) started in November 2019, with two parts on the Cai Lon and Cai ...

Looking back over the past year, we cannot help but be surprised when the agricultural sector successfully overcame the most saltwater intrusion and drought event in history in the Mekong Delta with a group of solutions. This result was seriously evaluated at the conference on implementing ...

Palm oil has long been a major economic backbone of Southeast Asian economies, notably Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. But the undeniable environmental impact of extensive deforestation, haze and forest fires caused by oil palm plantations has given the industry a bad reputation that has been ...

IN 1998, PEOPLE in Na Doi, a quiet village in northwest Thailand, noticed that their fish catches in the nearby Ngao River were declining. The fish they did manage to net were also getting smaller. Together, Na Doi’s 75 households decided to try a radical solution: ...

On January 12, the United States and Vietnam co-hosted the first Friends of the Mekong Policy Dialogue under the new Mekong-U.S. Partnership.  In his remarks, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Ambassador Atul Keshap emphasized that the United States ...

China has been ramping up its investments with the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation mechanism, which – according to American officials – is an attempt to compete with the Mekong River Commission (MRC). A competition over who dominates scientific and technical knowledge of the river indicates an escalation in the complexity of challenges ...

The government has successfully submitted Cambodia’s updated National Determined Contribution (NDC) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and earned praise as more than half of the world’s countries failed to do so by year’s end. The Kingdom’s 158-page NDC was submitted before the ...