The Thirsty Dragon: Southern China Experiences Another Severe Drought
November 12th, 2019
Via Future Directions International, a report on another drought in China: Water is described as China’s Achilles heel. It is ‘the most long-term and fundamental of China’s vulnerabilities … China has failed to secure a sufficient amount and quality of water for its citizens, leading to an “absolute scarcity” of the resource’. The drier than normal […]
Read more »How Climate Change, Dams, and Geopolitics Threaten The Mekong’s Future
November 7th, 2019
Via Foreign Affairs, an article on the troubles facing the Mekong River: On October 29, Laos unveiled a new dam in the country’s north. The 1.3-gigawatt Xayaburi dam sits on the Mekong River, which flows the length of the country. Laos plans to build nearly a hundred like it by 2020—many with direct funding and […]
Read more »The Thirsty Dragon and Parched Tiger: Tibet’s Rivers Will Determine Asia’s Future
November 3rd, 2019
Via The Diplomat, a look at the dawn of a new era of building dams on the Yarlung Tsangpo, where countless lives and ecosystems are being risked in the name of “development” and geopolitics: Over the last seven decades, the People’s Republic of China has constructed more than 87,000 dams. Collectively they generate 352.26 GW of […]
Read more »Lake Baikal Crisis: Chinese Activity a Handy Scapegoat for Russian Government Inaction
October 23rd, 2019
Via Future Directions International, a look at Russia and China’s collective impact on Lake Baikal: Lake Baikal is the oldest, deepest and the largest freshwater lake in the world by volume. Located in south-eastern Siberia, the lake is 25 million years old, 1,642 metres deep and contains 23,615 cubic kilometres of water (one-fifth of the world’s unfrozen fresh […]
Read more »The Thirsty Dragon: How Dams and China’s Might Imperil The Mekong
October 13th, 2019
Courtesy of The New York Times (subscription required), a sobering look at the future of the Mekong River: When the Chinese came to the village of Lat Thahae, perched on a muddy bend of a Mekong River tributary, they scrawled a Chinese character on the walls of homes, schools and Buddhist temples. No one in […]
Read more »Mekong: When The River Runs Dry
September 6th, 2019
Via The Interpreter, commentary on the impact that both drought and upstream water releases are having on the Mekong River: It has been a bad year for the Mekong. An unusually long period of drought has brought water levels to some of the lowest measurements in recent years. There are fears that the drought will have […]
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