Salween River Dams Intrude on Contested Land

The great rivers of Southeast Asia -- the Mekong, Irrawaddy, Salween, and others -- are targets for dozens of major dams that will transform the region's politics and ecology. The contest over the Mekong River is perhaps the most well-known, but conflict in the Salween basin is no less active. Fighting between the central government and ethnic groups has displaced thousands of people in recent years as national hydropower plans overlap with long-running political disputes. In a HotSpots H2O interview with Circle of Blue reporter Brett Walton, Dr. Carl Middleton discusses the strain that hydropower development is adding to one of the region's most politically, culturally, and biologically diverse watersheds. Dr. Middleton, director of the Center for Social Development Studies at Chulalongkorn University, in Bangkok, Thailand, also explores alternate futures for the Salween River. This is HotSpots Podcast Episode 03.