Summer field trip programme examines Mekong Delta

Việt Nam News – Foreign and Vietnamese lecturers and postgraduates will conduct research about landslides, river pollution, climate-change adaptation, transnational marriages and Khmer migration as part of the Summer School & Field Trip 2019 from March 18 to 31 in the Mekong Delta. Seven field sites in HCM City, Cần Thơ, Bình Dương, Trà Vinh, Đồng Tháp and Sóc Trăng Read More…

Sustaining the heartbeat of the Mekong Basin

China Dialogue – The Mekong River is often depicted as originating in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Maps show it flowing downstream through China’s southwest, and then forming the borders of or flowing through Laos, Myanmar and Thailand, before bisecting Cambodia and Vietnam’s Mekong Delta on its 4,500 kilometre journey from the Himalayas to the sea. However, the Mekong has another point Read More…

Review: The river rebels of the Mekong

The Third Pole – In his compelling book, “Last Days of the Mighty Mekong”, Brian Eyler travels down the river, meeting the rebels trying to save it from destruction The Mekong is the world’s 12th-longest river, second only to the Amazon in terms of biodiversity importance, and the world’s most productive inland fishery. It is also a transboundary river – rising from the glaciers Read More…

Huge Land Loss Predicted for Vietnam’s Mekong Delta

VOA – Nearly the entire Mekong Delta in Vietnam — an area that helps feed about 200 million people — will sink underwater by the year 2100 at current rates, a new study predicts. The delta, which is home to almost 18 million people and produces half of Vietnam's food, faces this potential humanitarian crisis largely because the heavy extraction of groundwater is causing land to sink Read More…

Fishing for DNA / A new method to help track the Mekong’s rare…

Southeast Asia Globe – Scientists are rapidly developing new DNA-methods to identify what kind of life is present in rivers, lakes and the ocean. Advocates of the method claim that it has the potential to revolutionise the way environmental monitoring is done. It began two decades ago with a spoonful of frozen soil. DNA fragments extracted from the depths of the Siberian earth allowed Read More…

Traditional fishing ceremony highlights empty nets syndrome

SEA Globe – An annual fishing ceremony in eastern Cambodia, where only traditional fishing gear is used, casts a light on the issue of falling fish stocks due to upstream hydropower dams and the use of illegal fishing methods. Wielding handmade bamboo baskets and nylon nets, hundreds of people waded thigh-deep into a muddy lake in eastern Cambodia on Sunday for an annual fish-catching Read More…

No hooks, lines or sinkers: Cambodians go traditional in fishing…

Phys Org – Wielding handmade bamboo baskets and nylon nets, hundreds of people waded thigh-deep into a muddy lake in eastern Cambodia on Sunday for an annual fish-catching ceremony where only traditional tools are used. The ceremony is held each year in eastern Tboung Khmum province after the crop harvest to commemorate the country's proud fishing history, said local chief Uch Read More…

Third of Himalayan glaciers can no longer be saved, study finds

News 24 – One-third of Himalayan glaciers will melt by the end of the century due to climate change, threatening water sources for 1.9 billion people, even if current efforts to reduce climate change succeed, an assessment warns. If global efforts to curb climate change fail, the impact could be far worse: A loss of two-thirds of the region's glaciers by 2100, said the Hindu Kush Himalaya Read More…

The Hidden Environmental Toll of Mining the World’s Sand

Yale Environment 360 – Nothing sounds so dull — even for most environmentalists — as sand mining. But in India, reports of sand mafias cashing in on the country’s construction boom have lately been making headlines. Last month, the issue went viral — a 17-year-old girl named Kavya in a fishing village in the state of Kerala posted a video on a mobile phone app about how excavators Read More…

Sharing experience with community fisheries between the Mekong and…

IUCN – On December 28-29, 2018, IUCN organised a visit to Kampong Phluk by staff of NTFP-EP, WWF, CEPA and NGO Forum to the Tonle Sap followed by a workshop in Siem Reap.  These four NGOs are part of IUCN NL’s Shared Resources-Joint Solutions (SRJS) initiative to strengthen community-based fisheries and forestry in the Mekong Flooded Forest in Stung Treng and Kratie Province. The field Read More…