Dr. Xuezhong Yu attended the Mekong River Commission’s Fourth Sustainable Hydropower Practice Forum August 10th-11th, themed ‘Dialogue with Hydropower Developers’ in Vientiane, Laos.

The forum provided an opportunity for hydropower developers, specialists, government, research institutes, development partners and other regional and international organizations to discuss hydropower planning and development in the Mekong Basin. As a keynote speaker, Dr. Yu presented the practices of joint operation of hydropower projects on a river or in a river basin. He also presented principles of system-level hydropower planning, using the Lancang River to demonstrate these practices.

Over recent years, Ecofish has made contributions to enhance food, water, and energy security in Southeast Asia by conducting research projects and training local professionals on sustainable hydropower. Thanks to the organizers of this year’s Sustainable Hydropower Practice for providing a great platform to continue to raise awareness and promote education on this topic.

Written by Dr. Xuezhong Yu, project leader of the MK22 project

In March 2016, Vietnam proposed for China to increase its outflow from the Jinghong Hydropower Station to the Mekong River to cope with drought and salt intrusion in a number of Vietnam’s Mekong Delta provinces. In response to Vietnam’s request, China agreed to release more water from its Jinghong Hydropower Station reservoir into the lower Mekong River in order to deal with drought in Vietnam. The water release at the Jinghong Hydropower Station was increased to 2190 m³/s on March 15 and was maintained around 2000m³/s from March 15 to April 10.

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