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 […]
Read more »Dam Battles Converge on Cambodia’s 3S Rivers
September 16th, 2021
Via Circle of Blue, an article on tensions between fishermen and dam operators in northeastern Cambodia: For decades, Nov Lun and his fellow fishermen harvested the rich bounty of the Sesan River in northeastern Cambodia. Then, three years ago, a giant hydroelectric power plant opened upstream from his village of Kumpun. Irregular water releases from […]
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 […]
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