Testing the Waters: Unregulated Mining in the Mekong Region

The Mekong River is widely perceived to be a clean river system that sustains local communities and national economies, feeds millions of international tourists, and enables the export of safe food products to the rest of the world. A new interactive dashboard providing novel data on nearly 800 locations of unregulated rare earth and gold mines along Mekong tributaries in Laos, Myanmar, and Cambodia challenges this assumption. These mines are possibly contaminating rivers with toxic chemicals such as arsenic, cyanide, and mercury and heavy metals bringing implications for downstream communities and economies who use these rivers. Testing efforts in Thailand have caused tens of thousands of people living along two Mekong tributaries to stop or reduce their use of those rivers, yet much of the rest of the region remains untested. This webinar will expose the Mekong’s unregulated mining problem and cast light on more than 1,500 other unregulated mining sites along other rivers in mainland Southeast Asia. Through the launch of this dashboard and monitoring effort, the Stimson Center aims to inspire regional governments to kick off a much needed water and sediment testing initiative that protects communities, cleans the rivers, and stops unregulated mining.