The Mekong River

Tuoi Tre The Tien River, which runs through several provinces in the Mekong Delta, has been severely contaminated, with some pollutants exceeding the limits by up to 1,000 times, seriously affecting the life and health of local people, authorities reported. The tests of surface water samples recently taken from the river showed that the suspended [...]

Mizzima News Four Chinese cargo ships and a Burmese patrol boat were attacked last week on the Mekong River in Burma. Chinese media reported that the attack on January 4 has heightened security concerns, following an earlier attack in which 13 Chinese sailors were murdered in October. The People’s Daily reported that a group of [...]

Scott Learn for The Oregonian When Robert Costanza and colleagues traveled to Laos earlier this year, the decision to build the lower Mekong River’s first mainstream dam seemed close to done. Then the researchers, most from the Northwest, pointed out the poor history of predicting environmental and social damage from big hydropower dams. Their study [...]

Not only is the waterway home to millions of people, but the freshwater fish it supplies is a major food source for the people of four different countries Op-Ed for the Bangkok Post The ministerial meeting to decide the fate of the controversial Xayaburi hydropower dam in Laos ended last week without a clear decision [...]

By Edward Wong for The NYT BEIJING — Chinese border guards began joint patrols Saturday on the Mekong River with counterparts from Laos, Myanmar and Thailand, according to Xinhua, the state news agency. The effort is a significant step by China toward playing a larger role in regional security. The joint patrols came about after [...]

Milton Osbourne for The Lowy Interpreter At a meeting of the Council of the Mekong River Commission (MRC) in Siem Reap, Cambodia, yesterday the issue of whether or not Laos should be able to go ahead with its plan to build a major dam on the Mekong at Xayaburi was fudged, with the council members [...]

Gayathri Vaidyanathan for Nature Scientists are hoping to stall plans to erect a string of dams along the Mekong River. This summer, a crew of strangers arrived in the tiny village of Pak Lan along the Mekong River in northern Laos. They sat around in shorts, examining technical drawings, and then surveyed the area, measuring [...]

Staff Writers Saigon GP Daily. Translated by Hai Mien. The administration in the Mekong Delta province of Dong Thap has asked authorities to step up measures to protect residents and over 26,000 hectares of rice crops from rapidly surging floodwaters on September 27. Floodwater levels in the upper reaches have risen even further with gushing [...]

Teerapong Pomun, Director at Living River Siam via Stimson The Mekong River is very important for millions of local communities along the mainstream and its tributaries who depend heavily on the river’s natural ecosystem functions. The health of the river is the health of the communities. Changes in the river basin mean a lot to [...]