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Will the Mekong River Really Become the Next South China Sea?
October 5th, 2022
Via The Diplomat, a look – amid competition between China and the U.S. – at how the question of the river’s fate has been imbued with a strategic undercurrent: In recent years, the fate of Southeast Asia’s great river – the Mekong – has attracted growing international scrutiny. The Mekong faces many challenges, from the […]
Read more »Cambodian Mega Dam’s Resurrection: ‘The Beginning of The End’ for Mekong?
September 16th, 2022
Via Mongabay, commentary on a Cambodian mega dam’s resurrection on the Mekong which some see as ‘the beginning of the end’: A long-dormant plan to build a mega dam on the mainstream of the Mekong River in Cambodia’s northeastern Stung Treng province appears to have been revived this year, leaving locals immediately downstream of the […]
Read more »The Thirsty Dragon: China Is Choking Off Asia’s Most Important River
April 10th, 2022
Via Foreign Policy, a report on the impact that upstream dams are having on the Mekong Basin: It’s a March afternoon in Kampong Khleang, and the boats keep coming down a muddy river leading from the Tonle Sap lake, docking to unload their haul, stilt houses casting shadows up the bank. The boats are battered […]
Read more »Slow Death of Cambodia’s Tonle Sap Lake
March 1st, 2022
Via The Diplomat, a report on the slow death of Cambodia’s Tonle Sap Lake: For centuries, detailed descriptions to the Tonle Sap have filled the reports and journals penned by foreign visitors to Cambodia. Can you describe what has prompted this attention? What is unique about Cambodia’s “Great Lake”? When you look back at these […]
Read more »Tonle Sap: On the Debt, Drought and Politics of Cambodia’s Most Important Lake
February 12th, 2022
Via Third Pole, an interview on Tonle Sap lake: Over the past three decades, Southeast Asia’s largest lake has declined precipitously. For centuries, the flooding of the Mekong would reverse the course of the river, causing Tonle Sap lake to swell up to six times its dry season size and creating what was once the […]
Read more »‘Not Enough Water’: Cambodia’s Farmers Face Changing Climate
January 19th, 2022
Via Al Jazeera, an article on how communities around Southeast Asia’s biggest lake are feeling the effects of drought: During Cambodia’s monsoon season, rice farmer Sam Vongsay’s backyard fills with water and the plastic trash of his houseboat-dwelling neighbours as the Tonle Sap lake grows with floodwaters from the Mekong River. But during the dry […]
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