Living Mekong Programme

The Mekong is one of the world’s great rivers, sustaining millions of people with its rich fishery and fertile flood plains. Home to an estimated 1,300 species of fish, the wealth of its biodiversity is comparable to that of the Amazon River.

But the giant catfish, one of the largest freshwater fish in the world and endemic to the Mekong, appears to be on the brink of collapse while the river’s population of Irrawaddy dolphins number less than 100.

Yet even though overfishing is a big threat to the wildlife of the Mekong River,  there are even bigger, more serious threats.

The most significant threat comes from infrastructure development, particularly the 149 planned large hydroelectric dams.

WWF is actively engaged with the Mekong River Comission (MRC) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in an innovative approach to this issue. We are jointly developing Environmental Criteria for Hydropower Development, which seeks to ensure that any real needs for additional hydropower energy can be met with the least environmental and social impacts.

The Living Mekong Programme is addressing all these dangers while providing solutions to the pressing problems of population growth and unsustainable development.