Disasters and emergency response

Vietnam’s prolonged drought, coupled with an extensive buildup of salinity, have driven five provinces in the country’s rice bowl to declare a state of emergency. “This year’s drought and salinity have been way more devastating than what we saw four years ago,” said Nguyen Thien Phap, ...

Laos is still free from the coronavirus even though the deadly Covid-19 has now spread to some 79 countries, Deputy Minister of Health, Associate Prof. Dr Phouthone Muongpak, told foreign diplomats yesterday. The ministry, in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, held a meeting to ...

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha issued 14 urgent measures today (March 3) to handle the Covid-19 situation, government spokesperson Narumon Pinyosinwat said. They are: 1. State agencies must strictly enforce the Public Health Ministry’s measures and guidelines on the outbreak and, if need be, can also issue ...

The Lao National Disaster Prevention and Control Committee is helping farmers across the country to improve their cultivation techniques so that crops can better withstand drought and dry season yields can be increased. Committee officials said recently that the country is facing drought conditions as rivers ...

China’s dams are worsening drought conditions downstream the Mekong River, storing and controlling up to 50 percent of its waters, experts say. China on average contributes around 14 percent of the Mekong River’s flow, “but an annual average can be misleading,” says Brian Eyler, director of ...

Unseasonal drought, floods and the negative impact of hydropower projects on the Mekong River’s ecology were major concerns raised by residents of northeastern provinces at a public hearing on the Luang Prabang Dam on Tuesday. Pradap Klatkhemphet, deputy secretary-general of the Office of the National Water ...

In a nod to green diplomacy, Vietnam is raising the geopolitical stakes over the Mekong River, Southeast Asia’s largest body of water, which has dropped to record lows due to a severe drought and construction of large dams. Hanoi has signaled its intent to raise the issue this ...

Amid an ongoing drought and low water levels, the state of the Mekong River is a topic that is animating discussion along the watercourse, with sights often aimed squarely at the Xayaburi Hydroelectric Power Plant. To help clear the waters, the project owners invited regional ...

NOAA/NASA’s Suomi NPP satellite captured this image of the hundreds of fires burning across large swaths of land in both Myanmar and Cambodia on Feb. 18, 2020. There are many reasons that fires start including weather related ones such as lightning which will ignite dry ...

China has had a setback in its infrastructure building along the Mekong River after Thailand cancelled a project on the vital Southeast Asian waterway. But observers say that without more coordination between downstream countries, China’s influence in the region will continue to go unchallenged. In a ...