News

China’s hyperactive dam building is a reminder that, while the international attention remains on its recidivist activities in the South China Sea’s disputed waters, it is also focusing quietly on other waters – of rivers that originate in Chinese-controlled territory like Tibet and flow to ...

As part of an ambitious bid to boost its hydropower output and become the ‘battery’ of Southeast Asia, the landlocked communist state of Laos now has three dam projects underway along the vast stretches of the Mekong river that wind through its rugged mountainous landscape.Keep ...

In December 2017, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) released its latest report on opium production in Myanmar and, at face value, the news was good. Since 2015, the area of cultivated opium poppy in Myanmar’s Shan and Kachin states has decreased ...

Thai Security forces seized 11.1 million methamphetamine tablets and arrested a Lao national at a Mekong River pier in Tha Uthen district of Nakhon Phanom province Monday night. Acting on a tip-off that a huge drug haul was to be smuggled across the Mekong River ...

Despite decades of world-beating economic growth that has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and into middle class life, around 900 million more Asian workers remain in what the International Labour Organization deems “vulnerable” employment.Keep reading ...

The Mekong Delta province of Kien Giang will create favourable conditions for citizens of Vietnam and Cambodia to cross the border for visits during the upcoming traditional New Year (Tet) festival. Locals of Kien Giang and Cambodian provinces of Kampot, Kep, Preah Sihanouk, Koh Kong and ...

Water management in the Mekong region is, in practice, dominated by energy objectives. In Cambodia, the priority is to substitute domestically produced hydropower for expensive diesel and electricity imports. In Laos, the priority is to generate revenue by drawing in foreign investment in dams and export ...

For years, the principal narrative has been a world attempting to keep China’s maritime ambitions in check in the South China Sea. With one-third of the world’s global trade carried upon these sea lines– estimated at roughly 5 trillion USD annually– it is an understandable ...

Water management in the Mekong region is, in practice, dominated by energy objectives. In Cambodia, the priority is to substitute domestically produced hydropower for expensive diesel and electricity imports. In Laos, the priority is to generate revenue by drawing in foreign investment in dams and ...

The Mekong River Commission on January 17 launched two joint projects to better manage the Mekong basin resources and address flood and drought issues, especially monitoring the environmental impact of the controversial Don Sahong hydropower dam.Keep reading ...