Mekong River News

CHIANG KHAN, Thailand — In the rustic old town of Chiang Khan on the Mekong River, a tourist haven in northeastern Thailand’s Isaan region, local fishing communities now live in…

The trafficking of illicit timber has hit the forested, tropical countries around the Mekong River Delta hard in recent years. Regulations and laws in places like the European Union and…

Nestled amid the mountains of northern Laos, the picturesque ancient capital of Luang Prabang is under siege from a dam-building fever along the Mekong River, with a Thai developer now…

A new study has identified 2050 as the tipping point by which stakeholders in the Mekong Delta will no longer be able to mitigate the issue of saltwater intrusion, which…

When the UNESCO World Heritage Committee (WHC) meets from July 16 to 31, they will be tasked with addressing urgent threats to some of the world’s most treasured sites of…

This article is the second in a two-part series on the future of Vietnam’s Mekong Delta. Read the first installment here. Vietnam's Mekong Delta is approximately the same size as…

On any list of places menaced by climate change, Vietnam's broad and fertile Mekong Delta ranks near the top. And yet, as I wrote for Mongabay four years ago, rising…

Last year, while parts of Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and southern Vietnam experienced a devastating drought, China held abundant water on the Upper Mekong River back from downstream communities, wiping out…

A survey of 40,000 existing and 3,700 planned dams finds that the structures could fragment fish habitat in the Amazon, Niger, Congo, Salween and Mekong river systems by 25% or more.

Laos will suspend new hydropower projects and carry out safety inspections of all existing dams, the government announced last week. The Aug. 7 decision came in the aftermath of the…

On Sept. 25, amid a continuing crackdown on media, political opposition and civil society described by commentators as “a slide into dictatorship,” Prime Minister Hun Sen officially launched Cambodia’s biggest…

Tool helps communities, researchers, policymakers, activists assess a proposed dam’s economic viability, greenhouse gas emissions and more.

A damning review of plans for the controversial Pak Beng hydropower dam on the Mekong River in Laos was released this week by US-based advocacy group International Rivers, adding weight…

YUNNAN, China -- The building site of the Wunonglong hydropower dam is not ringed by barbed wire fences and security guards as one might expect. Instead, visitors to this remote…

From the Amazon Basin to boreal forests, and from the Mekong to the Himalayan foothills, rivers worldwide are being targeted for major new dams in a global hydropower boom that…

PAK BENG, Laos — At the Happy Bar, on the bank of the Mekong River, the Bob Marley tape starts up at the same time every night after the tourist…

At a time when much of Cambodia is developing at a breakneck speed, where smartphones and BMWs have become almost as ubiquitous on the streets of Phnom Penh as saffron-robed…

Snaking down the length of the Mekong River the beautifully detailed map looks strikingly like those marking the distribution of unexploded ordnance in Laos. The red dots that pockmark the…

In 2015, scientists discovered 163 new species -- nine amphibians, three mammals, 11 fish, 14 reptiles and 126 plants -- in the Greater Mekong region, according to a new report…

This is the third article of an in-depth, four-part series exploring threats facing the Mekong Delta and how they might be addressed. Read the first, second and fourth installments. arly this year, many…

This is the first article of an in-depth, four-part series exploring threats facing the Mekong Delta and how they might be addressed. Read the second, third and fourth installments. t's a sad…

The Amazon, Congo and Mekong rivers host one-third of Earth's freshwater fish species, many of them found nowhere else — and this rich biodiversity is “being ravaged” by the development…

The Wildlife Conservation Society has a long, proven track record of environmental stewardship. So when the New York City-based group recently announced an ambitious new global conservation strategy, Mongabay got…

he Cambodian government has begun relocating some 5,000 villagers away from the flood site of the Lower Sesan 2 dam. The controversial project in the country's northeast province of Stung…

Lowland Forest profile characteristic of southern Yunnan Province’s threatened rainforests. Image Credit: Hua Zhu, 2008, Tropical Conservation Science. China’s southern Yunnan Province straddles the Myanmar border where the Mekong River…

  Rainforest in Kinabatangan, Malaysia. Photo by Rhett A. Butler.   Scientists at the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts have developed vegetation height maps for the entire tropics at…

New satellite data from NASA suggests that deforestation is sharply increasing in Bolivia and Mekong countries during the second quarter of 2014. NASA's Quarterly Indicator of Cover Change (QUICC), a…

Small hydroelectric projects in forested areas in Vietnam may be a front for logging operations in the country's national parks, reports Vietnam Net. According to Vietnam's Ministry of Agriculture and…

The Greater Mekong region of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand and Vietnam will lose a third of its remaining forest cover by 2030 unless regional governments improve management of natural…

Home to giant catfish and stingrays, feeding over 60 million people, and with the largest abundance of freshwater fish in the world, the Mekong River, and its numerous tributaries, brings…