The Mekong river under threat

The Mekong River basins are one of the most important and dynamic areas in the world for the battle between economic development’s demands for energy and environmental and social sustainability. As world attention shifts to the pending global climate change negotiations in far-off Copenhagen, the ongoing damming of the Mekong River and plans by the riparian states to build new dams threaten the livelihoods of millions or people in Southeast Asia who rely on the river. Milton Osborne’s latest publication for the Lowy Institute on the Mekong River focuses on these plans by the Lao PDR and Cambodia to build dams on the Mekong and evaluates their potential social and environmental ramifications especially for Cambodia’s Great Lake and for the Mekong Delta in Vietnam.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.