The Mekong River is one of the most bio-diverse rivers in the world, second only to the Amazon. The river rises in the Tibetan Plateau of the Himalayas and flows through three provinces of China, then Myanmar, Lao PDR, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam all the way to the South China Sea.
About 70 million people live in the basin, and many of them depend on the river for food and income. However, during the past couple of decades, the region has experienced an unprecedented surge in hydropower development. In 2010, more than 3,200 MW of hydropower capacity, about a tenth of the region’s total potential, had been installed on the Mekong River’s tributaries. Many more dams are either planned or currently under construction.
The debate on hydropower development in the region is contentious and highly political. Major tensions revolve around the shift from sustenance agriculture to an economy based heavily on natural resources-based sectors, most notably hydropower. Particularly the question of how to distribute the costs and benefits of hydropower is a point of discussion.
The Mekong River is one of the most bio-diverse rivers in the world, second only to the Amazon. The river rises in the Tibetan Plateau of the Himalayas and flows through three provinces of China, then Myanmar, Lao PDR, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam all the way to the South China Sea.About 70 million people live in the basin, and many of them depend on the river for food and income. However, during the past couple of decades, the region has experienced an unprecedented surge in hydropower development. In 2010, more than 3,200 MW of hydropower capacity, about a tenth of the region’s total potential, had been installed on the Mekong River’s tributaries. Many more dams are either planned or currently under construction.The debate on hydropower development in the region is contentious and highly political. Major tensions revolve around the shift from sustenance agriculture to an economy based heavily on natural resources-based sectors, most notably hydropower. Particularly the question of how to distribute the costs and benefits of hydropower is a point of discussion.
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