The Mekong River

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Say Mony, VOA Khmer | Siem Reap The race for hydropower development among Mekong countries could lead to conflicts or even war over water, regional security experts say. Hydroelectric projects have begun to spring up across the Mekong River, with some already under way and other already creating tensions between Southeast Asian neighbors. Experts on [...]

Thanh Nien News Activists in the ongoing fight against Mekong dams worry that recent US opposition has come too little, too late. Rising US interest in protecting the Mekong River from deleterious dams has been welcomed by environmentalists and non-governmental organizations. Some observers, however, worry that the recent US overtures will not suffice to shelve [...]

A foundation for the long term cooperation and prosperity for China and ASEAN by Phạm Phan Long for Viet Ecology Foundation Lancang-Mekong River is the world’s 11th longest river running through China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. In terms of bio-diversity, Lancang-Mekong is second only after the Amazon. For thousands of years, the river [...]

by Milton Osborne for The Lowy Interpreter For the past six months, the Mekong River Commission (MRC) has been seeking submissions about the proposal by Laos to build a dam on the Mekong at Xayaburi, a location some 150 kilometres downstream from Luang Prabang. Projected to be over 800 metres wide and with a height [...]

SGGP Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand have agreed to convene a special session on the prior consultation process for Laos’ controversial proposed Xayaburi hydropower dam on the Mekong River before determining how they should proceed with the proposal, the Mekong River Commission announced Friday. The four Lower Mekong Basin countries reached this decision at the [...]

By building dams on the upper Mekong, China has triggered a revival in hydropower ambitions downstream. Philip Hirsch for China Dialogue. Much has been written on the downstream impact of China’s dams on the Mekong River, which flows through or along the borders of Burma, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand after exiting China (where it [...]