The BBC The UN refugee agency has formally asked Laos for access to more than 4,000 ethnic Hmong who were forcibly repatriated from Thailand. The agency also called on the Thai government to provide details of a Thai-Laotian accord regarding the treatment of the Hmong. The Hmong say they face persecution in communist-led Laos because [...]
By Le Chinh – Translated by Hong Ha for Saigon Daily Despite a decade of development, the Mekong Delta’s tourism industry has failed to show robust growth. Uninspired tourist packages, limited advertising, a lack of tourism investment promotion and poor human resources training, all plague the industry. Thus, most tourists who visit, never return. The [...]
VietNamNet Bridge Aquatic products output from the Mekong River will be halved to 200,000 tons a year in the coming time due to the impacts of climate change and the construction of 19 hydropower dams in the upper reaches of the river, said a researcher. The 4,900-kilometer river flowing through China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia [...]
VietNamNet Bridge in The Mekong Delta VietNamNet Bridge – Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has decided to fund more than VND1 trillion (US$54 million) for 51 provinces to upgrade their dike and embankment systems to combat future floods. The decision is drawn from the plans of Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and local demand [...]
By Supalak Ganjanakhundee for The Nation Local residents in Ubon Ratchathani called on the government yesterday to end a deal with Laos to build the Ban Koum “mega-dam” on the Mekong River due to its likely serious social and environmental impact. Some 500 people in areas that would be affected by the dam held a [...]
A hole in one for WWF and wise word usage… Refreshing to see it promoted as ONE region. What is an ecoregion? Ecoregions defined Biodiversity is not spread evenly across the Earth but follows complex patterns determined by climate, geology and the evolutionary history of the planet. These patterns are called ” ecoregions”. WWF defines [...]
Analysis by Johanna Son for IPS CHIANG MAI, Thailand, Dec 12 (IPS/TerraViva) - Powerful neighbour. A rising power. Old friend. Big, secretive investor. Big boy of the region. These were some of the terms participants at the just-finished Mekong Media Forum here used, when asked to share the images of China they get from the [...]
From Bryony Taylor for The Jakarta Globe In the first summit meeting between Japan and officials from the five countries that border the banks of the 4,800-kilometer Mekong River, attendees pledged to urgently tackle the environmental issues related to development of the region. It is questionable, however, whether the meeting will produce anything more than [...]
Save the Mekong Yesterday (1st December), on the final day of the Mekong River Commission’s (MRC) call for public submissions to its Strategic Environmental Assessment on the Mekong mainstream dams, the Save the Mekong Coalition sent a letter to the Chairpersons of the National Mekong Committees (NMCs) of Lao PDR, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, urging [...]