News

Geopolitics plays out on the Mekong with doubts on dams and promises of cooperation

Recent weeks have seen new developments in the ongoing tension over the Mekong river and its waters, as the river basin faces ecological crises and its waters play an ever-larger role in geopolitics. Thailand has announced that it is reconsidering its decision to purchase power from the planned Sanakham ...

Editorial

China unveils early warning and data sharing website to cooperate with Mekong River countries

China made good on its promise to share year-round hydrological data on upper reaches of the Mekong River with the kickoff of an online information sharing platform on Monday. The platform aims to provide reliable forecasting and early warning services related to floods and droughts. China ...

Hu Yuwei Source

Fight for the Mekong gathers pace

More than 20 years ago, when two Chiang Rai-based environmentalists, Niwat Roikaew and Somkiat Kuenwongsa, learned that the Chinese government were blasting rapids in the upper Mekong River from Yunnan to Myanmar and Laos to clear the way for large commercial vessels, they started worrying. Back ...

PASSAKORN JUMLONGRACH

S. Korea to donate US$10 mln for COVID-19 vaccine support to developing nations, Moon says

President Moon Jae-in on Friday held a summit with leaders of Southeast Asia’s Mekong River nations via video links, in which he promised to contribute US$10 million to help provide new coronavirus vaccines to developing nations. “We will contribute $10 million for coronavirus vaccine support to ...

Chang Dong-woo

Sebastian Strangio on China in the Mekong region

With far-reaching implications for the upcoming elections in Myanmar and with the US tentatively wading into river governance, the Mekong region has become a contentious staging ground for China’s wider goals in Southeast Asia.  Sebastian Strangio’s new book In the Dragon’s Shadow: Southeast Asia in the Chinese Century draws ...

Tyler Roney

China Strikes Deal With Fellow Mekong River Countries for Year-Round Data

China last week agreed to share year-round data from the upper Mekong River with downstream countries, where its dams are being blamed for muting the natural rhythms of one of Asia’s great waterways and adding to the pain of recent droughts. For the past 18 years, ...

Zsombor Peter

River Of Tears: How Chinese Dams Are Devastating The Mekong

  Seen from the Thai side, facing the jungle-covered hills of the Laotian bank, the great river bordering the two countries ebbs continuously, like a body of water symbolizing the eternal course of life. The melancholic and beautiful flow of the Mekong, so steady and slow, ...

Bruno Philip

Australia Mulling Hefty Aid Injection for Lower Mekong Nations

The Australian government is reportedly preparing to bolster its aid programs in Southeast Asia, as concern in Canberra mounts about China’s growing influence in the region. According to an October 12 report in The Age, Australia is finalizing a Southeast Asian aid package that would inject of ...

Sebastian Strangio

Living Planet: The curse of clean energy — hydropower on the Mekong

The Mekong River in Southeast Asia flows for 4,350 kilometers from China to Vietnam through Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia. China’s construction of large hydropower dams to feed the country’s growing energy needs is causing problems downriver, including dire impacts on the waters and fertile ...

MRC releases new guidelines for Mekong hydropower development

The Mekong River Commission (MRC) released new guidelines yesterday assessing the risks of hydropower development through an assessment of five major themes. This is the third volume of Hydropower Mitigation Guidelines, and the themes include river hydrology and downstream flows, geomorphology and sediments, water quality, fisheries ...

Dina Huon

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