Despite experiencing systematic social, economic and cultural marginalization, women like Noon, Dao Prasuk and Pornpimol remain determined to assert their communities’ rights to existence and to protect rivershed commons for generations to come, contesting the widespread public assumptions that large-scale hydropower and water diversion infrastructure are required to propel the region’s development forward, write Pai Deetes, Phairin Sohsai and Tanya L. Roberts Davis of International Rivers (IR)

This weekend, urban centres across the country and beyond will be the sites of public gatherings commemorating International Women’s Day, celebrating hard-won legal advances while raising collective consciousness of the gendered injustice amidst economic and resource disparities, migration, war and militarization. Less visible yet no less important to highlight are the day-to-day efforts being led by women to challenge violence against the rivers, land, Indigenous Peoples’ cultures, their bodies and their very rights to existence. At a time when we must confront the realities of the climate crisis, compounded by a race to blast, mine and clear sacred lands surrounding the Mekong and Salween Rivers, listening to, learning from and working in solidarity with women of riparian communities is imperative.

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The post From the Riverbanks of the Salween and Mekong to the Halls of Justice: Women Challenging Mainstream Assumptions and Asserting Collective Rights first appeared on Open Development Mekong.

PHNOM PENH — In a rare move to combat forest crimes, Cambodian Environment Minister Eang Sophalleth on Sept. 2 banned all forest clearance at the site of a dam project in the country’s southwest.

The ban came after multiple incidents of illegal logging inside a protected area were reported, including by Mongabay, in connection to the Stung Meteuk hydropower project in Koh Kong and Pursat provinces.

However, activists monitoring the logging operations on the ground remain skeptical over the efficacy of the ban, noting that timber processing continues at the site of the hydropower project.

In a letter dated Sept. 2 and addressed to Ly Yong Phat, chair of Steung Meteuk Hydropower Co. Ltd., Sophalleth ordered the company to temporarily suspend its activities related to clearing forest for the 150-megawatt dams’ reservoirs, as well as the processing of logged timber.

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In the aftermath of Typhoon Yagi, communities in northern Thailand’s Chiang Rai province are taking stock of the toll wreaked by heavy rains and rising rivers. At least 33 people lost their lives in the country since mid-August amid hazardous conditions that devastated riverside homes, businesses and agricultural land.

The flooding has heightened public and policymaker scrutiny of plans to build a major hydropower dam spanning the Mekong River at Pak Beng in Oudomxay province in Laos. Experts warn the dam, situated 97 kilometers (60 miles) from the Thailand-Laos border, has the potential to elevate water levels in the mainstream Mekong and thus exacerbate seasonal flooding along key tributaries in Thailand.

Local communities and civil society groups have raised their concerns about the project for nearly a decade, claiming the developers and their Thailand-based investors have failed to consider the dam’s potential impacts on people living upstream.

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Widely regarded as a solution for climate change, renewable energy projects are booming in Southeast Asia. Installed solar and wind energy capacity across the 10 member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) surged by 20% in 2023 to account for 9% of the region’s total energy mix.

But while renewables have the potential to stem the demand for fossil fuels, a new report shows that wind and solar companies operating in Southeast Asia could be doing more to ensure they aren’t having unintended impacts on people’s rights and lives.

The integrity of wind and solar companies’ human rights policies and practices was the topic of a recent investigation by the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC), a U.K.-based private sector watchdog.

Researchers scrutinized the guiding principles of 12 energy companies operating in Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines, finding all companies lacked policies to protect the human rights of environmental defenders. Many also fell short on commitments to respect the human rights of communities affected by their operations.

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HCM CITY – The Cửu Long (Mekong) Delta is entering its annual flooding season and many rice farmers in upstream provinces have opened their field sluices to let the floodwaters and aquatic creatures in.

The floods are caused by the rising level of the Mekong River during the rainy season, and they bring sediments and fish and other creatures.

The country’s rice granary is expected to have higher levels of floodwaters this year compared to the last two because the forecast is for plenty of rain.

In the upstream provinces of An Giang and Đồng Tháp, where the first floodwaters enter the delta from Cambodia, the floods have started.

Farmers in An Giang’s An Phú District have begun to catch aquatic species in their fields and rivers and canals.

Nguyễn Văn Hiền in the district’s Vĩnh Hội Đông Commune said in recent years flooding had been minimal and late and receded quickly, and so there were few fishes.

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The post China says Mekong dam did not discharge water downstream amid heavy flooding in Thailand first appeared on Open Development Mekong.

Some twenty representatives of the Ubon Monitoring Group on Flood and Mekong Dams (UMFD) have travelled to Bangkok to file their petition to concerned entities including Lao PDR and the lead dam developer via their representatives in Bangkok in the hope that they will review the project and scrap it

The representatives over the past two days have visited the Foreign Affairs Ministry, the dam developer’s company, Parliament, and other concerned agencies to file their petition to call for the review and scrapping of the Phou Ngoy dam, planned on the Lower Mekong mainstream 70 kilometres away from the Mool-Mekong confluence in Khong Chiam district, Ubon Ratchathani province.

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NAN, Thailand: On clear mornings, at dawn, Ms Kanchanaporn Paeng-ud stands on a hillcrest where her family processes tapioca and looks out beyond the sweeping valleys across to neighbouring country Laos.

On the horizon, some 20 km away, she can see what resembles billowing columns of smoke that rise high into the sky. For five months of the year, those man-made clouds dissolve into tiny particles and are carried by the wind into her home country, Thailand.

The source of the emissions is the Hongsa Mine Mouth Power Project, a coal-fired power plant that began energy production in 2015 in Laos’ Xayaboury province.

Since then, villagers in the hills of Nan, a rural northeastern province on the Thai border with Laos, attest to strange things happening to their home and their health. 

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The post Mercury rising: Why a Thai community believes it is being poisoned across the international border first appeared on Open Development Mekong.

The post One-fifth of Mekong river fish species face extinction, report says first appeared on Open Development Mekong.

LUANG PRABANG, Laos (AP) — Landlocked Laos doesn’t have the famous beaches of its neighbors to attract tourists, but instead relies on the pristine beauty of its mountains and rivers and historical sites to bring in visitors.

The crown jewel is Luang Prabang, a UNESCO World Heritage Site where legend has it that Buddha once rested during his travels. It brings all the elements together, with its mix of historic Laotian and French colonial architecture on a peninsula at the confluence of the Mekong and the Nam Khan rivers.

But a multibillion-dollar dam project underway 25 kilometers (15 miles) upstream has prompted concerns that it could result in the city losing its UNESCO status, and broader questions about what the government’s ambitious plans to build multiple dams across the Mekong will do to the river, the lifeblood of Southeast Asia.

The post Fears grow that dam across Mekong River in Laos could harm World Heritage site of Luang Prabang first appeared on Open Development Mekong.