By this time of year, the Mekong River should have been rising steadily with the monsoon rains, bringing fishermen a bounty of fat fish. Instead, the river water in Thailand has fallen further than anyone can remember and the only fish are tiny. Scientists and people living ...

As talk of El Niño-inspired droughts shaped much of the conversation ahead of this year’s late-blooming rainy season, recent torrential rains in some areas of the Kingdom have given way to new fears of crop inundation and damage. On Tuesday, the Ministry of Water Resources and ...

Dam operations upstream combined with a drought have caused a severe drop in water levels along the Mekong River, on which tens of millions of people rely for their livelihoods through fishing or farming, say Thais who live by the banks of the great waterway. BenarNews ...

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 ...

The livelihood of millions of people in China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam will be affected as drought and newly-built dams impede the Mekong River’s flow, drying up segments of the once fast-flowing river. Observers predict that these two factors may lead to the death of ...

Up to 15 serious labour safety violations at coal mines in northern Quang Ninh Province were reported in the first nine months of this year, leaving 18 people dead and injuring dozens more, Lao Dong newspaper reported. In August alone, there were five incidents, leaving six ...

Inertia and the inherent tone-deafness of an authoritarian regime have set Vietnam on a course toward economic and political disaster. It is not too late, however, for the ruling party’s top leaders, the Politburo, to disavow support for state-owned PetroVietnam’s plans to build a huge ...

In recent weeks, the Mekong River, one of the world’s longest and largest rivers, which has been under peril due to a confluence of development, demographic, and geopolitical pressures, has been at its lowest levels in a century. Dams upstream are holding back much needed water ...

The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations has ranked the Mekong Basin as the world’s most important hydrologic region or river basin for freshwater fish catches. In its latest State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture report, the FAO said that Mekong Basin accounted ...

A new monitoring platform that uses satellite imagery to track dam reservoir levels on the Mekong can shed light on the contentious issue of how the river’s precious water is stored, and the effects of climate change. The disruption to water and sediment flows along the ...

The Ministry of Water Resources and Meteorology has warned that the Mekong River will rise in the next three to four days, which could cause flooding in the lower Mekong Delta. Affected areas will be: Stung Treng, Kratie, Kampong Cham and other provinces. The rise of ...

A top-ranking Chinese official declared that the country is releasing more water from its dams on the upper Mekong River in order to aid drought-stricken downstream neighbors.  The announcement from Foreign Minister Wang Yi, made at a meeting of the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation group, comes as the beleaguered ...

The water level in the Mekong river, bordering this northeastern border province with Laos, is rising following heavy rain in the region over the past few days. On Tuesday morning, the level was up by more than 1 metre from Monday, to 5m deep. However, it ...

“The most disastrous situation in history,” was one expert’s stark verdict when shown images of the dry Mekong River bed and dead aquatic animals. Dr Chainarong Setthachua, a lecturer and ecology expert at Maha Sarakham University, was at a loss when asked to describe the ...

China on Thursday said it was helping its downstream neighbors cope with a prolonged drought by releasing more water from its dams on the Mekong River, adding it would consider sharing information on hydrology to provide further assistance in the future. The statement came as a ...

Cambodia improved its ranking for the ease of doing business from 133 last year to 127 in 2015, making marked progress in the number of days and procedures required to start a business, though it is still ranked well below the world average, according to ...

Facebook and the Mekong River Commission (MRC) launched a collaboration initiative Monday to provide early flood alert and drought monitoring information to Mekong nations. The MRC stated it has installed 22 hydrological stations along the main channel in the lower Mekong River basin to monitor and ...

The following is the gist of the Tokyo Strategy 2018 for Mekong-Japan Cooperation adopted at a meeting of the leaders of Japan, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam on Tuesday. Japanese and Mekong leaders: — elevate Japan-Mekong cooperation to “strategic partnership.” — identify “vibrant and effective” connectivity, people-centered ...

Southeast Asian countries would have likely experienced a much less severe drought last year if it were not for China’s dams, a new study says, prompting a pushback from the intergovernmental Mekong River Commission (MRC). The 4,000-km (2,485-mile) Mekong is one of the world’s longest rivers – ...

One of the main issues facing nations in the Mekong River Commission, including Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos, is that China has refused to share information about the operations of its hydropower dams. As a result, the MRC countries are cautious about using their limited ...