The Mekong River – Asia’s third-longest which nourishes China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam – is drying up.
Hit by devastating droughts in 2016 and 2020, the Mekong region is battling sustained heat waves again this year affecting drinking water supply and threatening agricultural output.
Overfishing, riverbank erosion, habitat loss and pollution have all also done their part to damage the river's health.
As Brian Eyler, co-lead of the Mekong Dam Monitor at the Stimson Center in Washington. says: "This is a river undergoing a heart attack."
While some solutions are underway, how the nations which rely on the river deal with the continued challenges will be key to ensuring its sustainability in the decades to come.
360info has commissioned academic experts to write the following articles. All are available for reuse/republication under Creative Commons 4.0. You may also use them as a resource for ideas and sources, with attribution. Links will direct you to our free digital wire service, 'Newshub'.
|
Key Facts:
All 360info content is licensed under Creative Commons 4.0, meaning you can:
Share - copy and redistribute the material in any format
Adapt - remix, transform and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.
All we ask is that our author bylines are retained - you are welcome to include your own - and 360info is referenced at the foot of an article i.e. "This article was originally published under Creative Commons by 360info"
About us:
About 360info
360info is a Not-For-Profit public interest journalism initiative. Editorial focus is on big-picture global issues, rather than breaking news. A team of professional journalists and editors commission university-affiliated academics around the world to write features, explainers & contextual pieces, then translate their work into plain, understandable language.
Contact details:
Emma Hoy,
Media Liaison and Communications
