News

Dams on the Mekong are causing mayhem

The Mighty Mekong is one of the world’s most iconic rivers, but it is at grave risk of turning into a shadow of its former self. “Everywhere you look there are indications that this river, which has provided for so many, for so long, is at ...

Rebutting US Claims, China Says Dams Unrelated to Thai Drought

The Chinese Embassy in Bangkok on Monday dismissed a US-funded study accusing China’s dams of hoarding water in the vital Mekong River. In a statement released to Khaosod English, the embassy said the extreme drought felt by Mekong’s downstream countries in 2019 were caused by exceptionally ...

Khaosod English

Vietnam and Mekong peers pay economic price despite low virus tolls

Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam have detected far fewer coronavirus cases than their more advanced Southeast Asian neighbors, but their economies are taking a beating all the same, potentially forcing a rethink of their development models down the road. Analysts at Maybank Kim Eng expect the ...

DYLAN LOH

US Study Insists China's Dams to Blame for Mekong Drought

China’s massive dams on the Mekong River exacerbated last year’s extreme drought in downstream countries including Thailand, researchers from a US government-funded study said on Wednesday. The researchers discuss the findings – originally published by American research company Eyes on Earth Inc. – in a video conference organized ...

Khaosod English

Covid-19 Impacts in the Mekong Region | Crisis to Opportunities Series

The global Covid-19 crisis has shed a light on the deep-seated inequities in the way our rivers and the people who depend on them are treated. With the exposure created by this crisis comes an opportunity. As International Rivers adapts to current circumstances, we are ...

Pianporn Deetes

Dams upstream of the Mekong damage 70 million people

Construction of dams on the Mekong continues. The river is 4,000 kilometers long, rising on the Tibetan plateau and flows through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. The stretch of this river that flows through the Chinese territory is 2,130 km. It’s called Lan-ts’ang River. Chinese ...

Nguyen Hung

Water Becomes a Weapon in China’s Geopolitical Chess

Modern China seems to have learned the ancient master’s lesson well. It has unleashed water wars on Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand. Even as China’s neighbors deal with COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, they are experiencing their worst drought in living memory. The mighty Mekong ...

Mayank Singh

If China won’t build fewer dams, it could at least share information

River flow downhill, which in much of Asia means they start on the Tibetan plateau before cascading away to the east, west and south. Those steep descents provide the ideal setting for hydropower projects. And since Tibet is part of China, Chinese engineers have been ...

How protecting forests and their communities can prevent the next outbreak

Clear-cutting forests may provide short-term monetary gains, but the true costs of mass deforestation could be steep.  The novel coronavirus that has caused the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic is believed to be zoonotic, meaning it first spread from animals to humans. Not only is that a common ...

CAROLYN COWAN

South-East Asia’s biggest river is drying up

ish writhe frantically in the shallow pool, as their schoolmates stranded on the exposed sandbar breathe their last. It is November, the end of the monsoon season, yet the water in the Mekong river is perilously low. On this stretch, in north-eastern Thailand, the bank is ...

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