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Laos Pushes Forward With Seventh Mekong River Dam Project
April 29th, 2022
Via The Diplomat, an update on the Phou Ngoy dam which is one of nine hydropower projects that the Lao government is planning on the mainstream of the Mekong River: Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported this week that officials in Laos will soon take an important step forward on a new hydropower project, the seventh large-scale dam project […]
Read more »Hydropower Dams Have Had ‘Profound’ Impact on Mekong River, Monitor Claims
March 9th, 2022
Via The Diplomat, an article on how a year of data from the Mekong Dam Monitor shows the extent of the impact on Southeast Asia’s longest river: Hydropower projects, including a spree of mega-dams in China, have had a significant impact on the midstream reaches of the Mekong River, exacerbating drought conditions and altering the river’s […]
Read more »The Thirsty Dragon: China Is Running Out of Water and That’s Scary for Asia
January 29th, 2022
Via Bloomberg, an opinion piece looking at how – of all Bejing’s problems (demographic decline, a stifling political climate, the stalling or reversal of economic reforms) dwindling natural resources may be the most urgent: Nature and geopolitics can interact in nasty ways. The historian Geoffrey Parker has argued that changing weather patterns drove war, revolution and upheaval during a long […]
Read more »The Thirsty Dragon: What Chinese Dams in Laos Tell Us About the Belt and Road Initiative
December 6th, 2021
Via The Diplomat, a look at what Chinese dams in Laos tell us about Chinese ambitions and objectives: With nearly $900 billion in investment across nearly 140 countries, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has sparked significant debate. Much of this debate has focused on the professed grand strategic aims of the project, leading to […]
Read more »US, China Dueling For Power On The Mekong
September 6th, 2021
Via The Asia Times, a report on how the countries sharing the Lancang-Mekong River are entering a new era of hydropolitics, involving programs on both economic and water resource development, and hydro-diplomacy via China’s dam-engineered control of the headwaters of the Mekong: When China announced in early August a new US$6 million for new development […]
Read more »Mekong River Commission Calls for Improved Hydropower Data Sharing
July 1st, 2021
Via The Diplomat, an article on the Mekong River Commission’s efforts to improve hydropower data sharing: The Mekong River Commission (MRC) has urged China and its Southeast Asian member states to share more data on hydropower operations that are contributing to the increasingly wild fluctuation in water levels on the vital waterway. In its latest situation report, released […]
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