The arc where mountains meet the plains via the Mekong and other major river valleys form the Indo-Burma hotspot that includes Laos is well known as an area of immense natural and ecological value.
Tag: ecology
Mekong River faces a damming issue
Community-based tourism is starting to become popular and the Mekong River plays an important role, but dam building could prove harmful to the sector.
Study says Mekong River dams could disrupt lives, environment
Scientists lay out what dam construction could mean for residents and the environment in the region.
Scientists discover 115 new species in Greater Mekong Region: WWF report
A beautifully colored frog, two mole species found by a team of Vietnamese and Russian scientists, and a fish from Cambodia with a long body and bold stripes…
Mekong Delta faces three big challenges caused by climate change
Mekong Delta, the rice granary of Vietnam, is facing three challenges from climate change, unsustainable development and hydropower development, says local ecologist.
Unique limestone mountains excessively exploited in southern Vietnam
A spectacular area of land blessed with unique limestone mountain ranges in the southern Vietnamese province of Kien Giang is being threatened by heavy industrial activity.
Saving the Salween: Southeast Asia’s last major undammed river
In a world of galloping hydro-power rapidly engulfing the developing world and new dams popping up in the Amazon, the Congo and along the Mekong, it is hard to find any important river left in the world, that has escaped unscathed and undammed.
The free-flowing Salween is the last important undammed river in East Asia, where endangered species including tigers and clouded leopards can still be found in remote parts of Myanmar’s ethnic Karen State.
From the snow-capped mountains of Tibet, the Salween rushes through steep gorges in Yunnan Province and flows through four of Myanmar’s ethnic states before emptying into the Andaman Sea.
Mekong dam projects ‘could destroy livelihoods, ecology’
THE ECOLOGY of the Mekong River could be destroyed within 10 years if dam projects along the river are allowed to continue, Thai and Cambodian non-government organisations have warned.
They have also warned that it will be very difficult for people to claim compensation for projects’ negative impacts on the environment and their livelihoods because it will be not difficult if not impossible to clearly link the effects to a particular dam.