Damming the Mekong

摘要

There are contested plans for 11 hydropower projects on the free-flowing main stem of the lower Mekong river in south-east Asia and another 77 dams by 2030 in the Mekong Basin as a whole. The Mekong river (called the Lancang river in China) rises from the Tibetan Plateau and flows for 4800 kilometres through China, Myanmar, Laos,Thailand, Cambodia andVietnam.The river has a basin of 795,000km~2 and receives 18% of its inflows from the 24% of the basin located in China and Myanmar. The Lower Mekong Basin (LMB) countries -Laos,Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam - collaborate in the management of their portion of the basin through the Mekong River Agreement and Commission.