(January 22, 2008) The Lao government’s ambition to become one of Southeast Asia’s biggest exporters of hydropower and wood chips is hurting the country’s small farmers and driving young people to neighbouring Thailand in search of better prospects, a recent Canadian-led study has found.

(January 16, 2008) China Southern Power Grid, owner and operator of power distribution networks in the country’s southern provinces, will seek to buy more power from the Three Gorges dam and Hong Kong to plug a supply gap caused by the worst coal shortage in the southwestern region in five years, SCMP reported.

(January 15, 2008) The Lao government’s ambition to become one of Southeast Asia’s biggest exporters of hydropower and wood chips is hurting the country’s small farmers and driving young people to neighbouring Thailand in search of better prospects, a recent Canadian-led study has found.

(January 11, 2008) Thai and Chinese power companies have joined with Thailand’s biggest construction company, SET-listed Ital-Thai Development, to develop a $5 billion coal-fired power plant in western Cambodia, Bangkok Post reports.

(December 14, 2007) Thailand’s National Energy Policy Council has signed an agreement to buy electricity from the Hongsa power plant in Laos, Bangkok Post reported.

(December 13, 2007) A report by the Nam Theun 2 Power Company’s panel of international experts warns of “significant impoverishment” in hundreds of villages affected by the World Bank’s model dam project, and says more donor aid is needed. Probe International’s Grainne Ryder argues instead that revenues from the Nam Theun 2 dam should go directly to villagers suffering losses caused by the dam’s operations.

(December 10, 2007) When citizens groups recently denounced the Mekong River Commission as a failure, they were criticizing its member governments and international donors for failing to protect the Mekong River. And rightly so.

(November 27, 2007) A major expansion of a Nordic-built hydropower dam in communist Laos will cause serious flooding, ruin fisheries, and displace thousands of people living downstream, a Norwegian environmental group said this
week, Reuters reported.

(November 26, 2007) China’s Sinohydro Corporation signed an agreement to sell electricity to Thailand’s Electricity Generating Authority (EGAT) from future hydro dams on Nam Ou, a large Mekong tributary in Laos.

(November 14, 2007) The campaign to save South-east Asia’s largest waterway from being blocked by a series of massive dams picked up pace this week, with activists accusing a regional river authority of abandoning its mission to protect the Mekong River.

(November 14, 2007) International intervention is necessary to halt the construction of six dams along the Mekong River that could displace tens of thousands of people and endanger over a thousand aquatic species, say environmental groups.

(November 14, 2007) The campaign to save South-east Asia’s largest waterway from being blocked by a series of massive dams picked up pace this week, with activists accusing a regional river authority of abandoning its mission to protect the Mekong River.