Electricity production
Hydropower dams
Mekong River nations face the hidden costs of China’s dams
Sam In, a 48-year-old rice farmer from Cambodia’s northeastern province of Stung Treng, never knew that people paid for water until he was forced to move out of his home on the banks of a Mekong River tributary two years ago.Keep reading ...
Yukako Ono
Solar Surge Threatens Hydro Future on Mekong
Thousands of megawatts of wind and solar energy contracts in the Mekong region of Southeast Asia have been signed, seriously challenging the financial viability of major hydropower projects on the river, an energy expert told a water conference last week.Buoyed by a recent Thai government ...
VOA Khmer
On the Mekong, questions arise over impact of favoring hydropower
On a bucolic stretch of the Mekong, near Cambodia’s northern border, people can tell you all about hydropower. The dam is why fish catches have been dropping, steadily, for the past few years. The dam is why so many young men have taken up logging ...
Abigail Seiff
Pact calls for talks before major Mekong projects
Leaders of the lower Mekong basin countries – Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam – agreed yesterday (April,4) to continue implementing rules and procedures for water use under the Mekong River Commission (MRC) in order to regulate controversial projects on Southeast Asia’s longest river.Keep reading ...
The Nation Reporter
Mekong River dams ‘will harm food security’
Study claims hydropower development will also increase poverty in the region. Hydropower development on the Mekong River will aggravate food insecurity and poverty in the region and reverse the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a study says.Keep reading ...
Pratch Rujivanarom
Mekong researchers seek ways to improve dams
Researchers backed by multi-million-dollar grants from NASA are heading to Southeast Asia’s Mekong River region to find ways to improve dams so they are less harmful to people and the environment.Researchers from Michigan State University (MSU) will spend three years analysing sites in the lower ...
Thomson Reuters Foundation
China Defends Dam Building on Mekong River as Activists Head to Court
BEIJING – Officials from southwest China’s Yunnan province have defended a plan to build a dam in the region as “fully legally compliant”, after an environment group took developers of the project to court last month for violating laws.Keep reading ...
Women must be central to Mekong dam decisions
Today, on International Women’s Day, a recent trip to the Mekong Basin serves as a reminder that women’s voices must be central to decision-making on hydropower, and in broader energy planning for Thailand and the region.The Nam Ou River, a longest tributary of the Mekong ...
