A Splash of Good News for Mekong River Communities
The first four months of 2022 were some of the wettest in several years, the result of increased rainfall and China releasing more water from its upstream dams, according to monitoring data of the Mekong River Commission (MRC).
These two factors combine to unleash greater flows of sediment and nutrients, which ought to boost fish supply, bolster agriculture and benefit some 70 million people who dwell in these riverine communities.
However, this positive development may also be fleeting: July could bring more drought to parts of the Lower Mekong River Basin, according to drought forecasting of the MRC, More specifically, while soil moisture now shows significant improvement over 2020 and 2021, by July drought conditions could strike northern and southern Laos, western Cambodia, and the central highlands of Vietnam.
Laotian Times
