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The Mekong River, a critical waterway for six countries in Southeast Asia, is registering critically low water levels this summer.
The Mekong River Commission (MRC), which monitors Southeast Asia's longest river, reported in mid-July that water levels over the previous month had fallen to "among the lowest on record."
The Mekong springs up from the Tibetan Plateau in China and flows to the South China Sea through Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Around 60 million people depend on the river for fishing, farming and transportation.
However, unseasonably low rainfall, along with maintenance work at the Jinghong hydropower station in China, and tests on the Xayaburi dam in Laos, have been identified as causing a massive decline in water levels.
And although rains have recently increased, easing drought conditions and gradually raising water levels, the crisis is far from over.
In June 2019, the average rainfall level in Thailand's Chiang Saen province, for example, was only around two-thirds of the total monthly rainfall for June from 2006 to 2018. Reports have shown that the acute shortage of rainfall is due to El Nino — a meteorological phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean that affects the climate all over the Pacific basin.
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