Disasters and emergency response

A new report that found China’s upstream dam management is responsible for dangerously low water levels and drought conditions along the Mekong River needs to be “studied”, according to a Cambodian National Mekong Commission official. The report, titled “Monitoring the Quantity of Water Flowing Through the ...

Legislation authorizing a state of emergency to contain the spread of the coronavirus in Cambodia risks violating the right to privacy, free speech, and peaceful assembly, a United Nations expert said Friday, as lawmakers gave their final approval of the bill. “Emergency measures must be necessary ...

“No fish. Nothing. We can only catch enough to eat ourselves. We fish through the night and all we catch is one or two skewers for cooking,” a Lao fisherman told Radio Free Asia earlier this year. He spoke to journalists on his boat on the Mekong River ...

More water discharged from Chinese dams to the lower Mekong River in the dry season and less water in the rainy season. That means a reduction of drought and flooding in the lower Mekong countries. That was the ideal “cooperation” Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam ...

While the world’s attention has been focused on the Covid-19 pandemic, northern Thailand has been experiencing the worst forest fires in decades. Already raging since mid-March, the fires are projected to continue well into May. With the news of the pandemic dominating international media, the choking ...

Groups working to protect the Mekong River have called for greater transparency and cooperation from China after a report that Chinese dams held back water during a damaging drought in downstream countries last year. China has disputed the findings of the U.S. government-funded study and said ...

For three decades, China has been building dams on the upper Basin of the Mekong River, worrying countries downstream that China could one day turn off the tap. New data shows that for six months in 2019, while China received above average precipitation, its dams ...

China’s Mekong River dams held back large amounts of water during a damaging drought in downstream countries last year despite China having higher-than-average water levels upstream, a U.S. research company said in a study. China’s government disputed the findings, saying there was low rainfall during last ...

As China was stricken by the coronavirus in late February, its foreign minister addressed a concerned crowd in Laos, where farmers and fishers across the Mekong River region were contending with the worst drought in living memory. His message: We feel your pain. The foreign minister, Wang Yi, ...

With friends falling ill, another passing away and his movements restricted, coronavirus had already stretched Giordano Alpi physically and mentally when another disaster struck his 30-hectare farm in Emilia-Romagna in northern Italy. A sudden plunge in night-time temperatures to below zero in late March caused extensive ...