President pledges to encourage investment to Myanmar
President Trần Đại Quang pledged that Việt Nam will encourage its business community to invest in Myanmar, especially in agriculture, fish farming, mining and tourism. At a meeting with visiting Myanmar Minister of Home Affairs Kyaw Swe in Hà Nội yesterday, the President said that Việt ...
Cambodia halts mainstream Mekong River dam plans for 10 years, official says
Electricity-starved Cambodia will not develop new hydropower dams on the Mekong River for the next 10 years, a senior energy official said on Wednesday, as it reviews its policy to seek energy from coal, natural gas and solar. The decision means that neighboring Laos, which has ...
Prak Chan Thul
China’s post-COVID-19 woes to flow through the Mekong
As China shows signs of recovery from the COVID-19 outbreak, speculations abound about what a post-COVID-19 future will look like. Amid the cacophony of voices, consensus is gathering that global power balances will shift. What this shift might entail is fiercely debated. Some see China ...
Heidi Dahles, Griffith University
China ITS : can be sued for choking Mekong
China is blighting millions of Southeast Asians by choking the Mekong River. It can be sued before the United Nations. Reparations and sanctions can be extracted under international pacts. Beijing communist rulers’ global excesses amidst COVID-19 pandemic will isolate China. Eleven dams on China’s side of the Mekong have dried up farms downstream in Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. ...
Record Mekong water shortage raises concern over Chinese dams
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 ...
Crop inundation feared
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 ...
Joint Statement To Strengthen Water Data Management and Information Sharing in The Lower Mekong
The Ministers/Representatives of Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand, and Viet Nam (hereafter referred to as the “Lower Mekong Countries”); the European Union, the Governments of Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, and the United States; and the World Bank (hereafter referred to as the ...
Thais Living Along Mekong Struggle from Drought, Effects of Dams
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 ...
Nontarat Phaicharoen
China unveils early warning and data sharing website to cooperate with Mekong River countries
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 ...
Hu Yuwei Source
Drought, dams may lead to death of Mekong
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 ...
Azman Hamid, Patrick Sennyah, Roy Goh
Safety at coal mines comes under scrutiny
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 ...
Mekong River Strikes Another Record Low
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 ...
Luke Hunt
FAO sees Mekong as biggest source of global inland fish catch
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 ...
AKP
New platform aims to reveal dam and climate impacts on the Mekong
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 ...
Chris Humphrey
Ministry of Water Resources issues warning of rising Mekong River levels, caused by Typhoon CEMPAKA
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 ...
As the Mekong Withers, China Releases Water from Controversial Upstream Dams
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 ...
Kayla Ritter
Mekong river rising after heavy rain
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 ...
PATTANAPONG SRIPIACHAI
Mekong runs dry as politics, business fail local communities
“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 ...
Piyaporn Wongruang
China says will help manage Mekong as report warns of dam danger
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 ...
Patpicha Tanakasempipat and Kay Johnson
Cambodia's business rankings edge up
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 ...