This place is extremely remote and empty of people, but it's not the numbers of people here than make an importance.

Tibet is one of the most strategically important regions of the entire world to control because it is the home of tens of thousands of glaciers locked high up in the mountains that collectively store the third largest reserve of fresh water found anywhere in the planet only behind the North and south Poles.

And at the same time, the sources of many of the world's mightiest rivers begin up here as well, like the Yangtze, Yellow and Mekong rivers, the three longest rivers located on the Asian continent and the 3rd, 6th and 12th longest rivers in the entire world, respectively.

The Yangtze and yellow rivers flow to the east from their source is in Tibet towards the pacific ocean entirely within just a single country, the people's Republic of china.

Hundreds of millions of chinese people live downstream within the basins of these two great rivers and at the end of the Yangtze across the river's delta is an area that alone comprises around 20% of china's entire Economic GDP.

These rivers are the literal arteries that supply china's huge and thirsty population and the control of their sources over in Tibet is an imperative matter of national security for Beijing.

But then there's that third river, the Mekong, which doesn't entirely run through a single country far to the contrary, Instead of flowing to the east, like the Yangtze and Yellow, the Mekong flows to the south through the territory of china initially but eventually winds its way through Southeast Asia across multiple other countries like Myanmar Laos Thailand cambodia, and finally on through the river's delta region in southern Vietnam, where it finally empties into the south china sea.

The key facts that make this 4500 kilometer long river one of the most important in the world is that it is the primary source of fresh water for nearly 70 million people across Southeast Asia, while simultaneously providing almost 20% of the entire world's freshwater fish supply, which understandably makes the river critical for the life of the entire region the same way that the Yangtze and yellow rivers are critical for china's civilization.

But despite that massive importance, the Mekong River is currently dying for the nations of Southeast Asia and a lot of it can be blamed on the policies of china when visualizing the Mekong, it's more helpful to see it through the lens of two really separate and distinct areas.

There's the lower Mekong basin in the south that begins near the Laos china border that encompasses a broad mass of tributary rivers that covered the majority of Laos cambodia and significant amounts of Thailand and Vietnam.

So while this southern basin is a large flowing spread of tons of different rivers and wetlands across five different countries, the separate upper Mekong basin to the north is almost entirely just within china where the river is more technically known as the land came.

And it's up here from the high peaks of Tibet down towards the lower elevation of Southeast Asia, that the water flows across a much steeper geography than it does further downstream.

Think of it almost like a really long drawn out waterfall over hundreds of kilometers.

This means that the water flows pretty quickly down this area and that means that the Land King has one major pro and one major khan.

On the one hand, it means that it's full of pretty intense falls and rapids that historically made it pretty useless for navigation and trade.

But on the other hand, in recent times, it means that the Land King section of the river is one of the most ideal locations in the world to construct dams at and harvest hydro electric power from with tens of millions of people living so near to the river Today, electricity has always been a commodity that's been highly in demand and as a result, dam building across both the upper and lower basins of the Mekong have been an incredibly popular engineering activity.

More than 200 dams in total have been constructed or or planned to be constructed across the southern basin throughout Thailand Laos cambodia and Vietnam.

And while that sounds like a lot, most of them are pretty small in scale and are just located on the Mekong's various tributary rivers that feed into the main section.

In fact, out of that huge number of 200 dams, only two of them have actually been built across the main section of the lower Mekong here.

The Library and the Don Suhong, both located within Laos.

This means that the flow of water through the lower Mekong is primary course is generally pretty unrestricted and free flowing.

But this is far far from the case when compared with the upper steeper region of the Lancang, that's more conducive to hydro electric power generation Ever since the 19 nineties china has gone on an unparalleled building spree of dams across all of their territory, but especially on the Lancang where they've constructed 11 of them just in the past couple of decades alone, with 1/12 1 under construction right now and the 13th one planned shortly in the future.

And unlike the lower basin, all of these dams have been built directly across the rivers, primary course and not along any of the tributaries.

Even further, two of these 11 dams are classified as large storage dams, meaning that they're extremely large and they hold back a massive volume of water if you took just these two chinese dams on the land King alone.

And you didn't even include any of the other nine, they store almost as much water as the entirety of the Chesapeake bay between the U.

S.

States of Maryland and Virginia, a body of water that spans more than 11,000 square kilometers.

That is a lot of water being held back already.

But when you consider that china has nine other dams on the Lancang to more being built in the near future and 11 more planned to be constructed over the next 20 years.

You can quickly see how this can start becoming a pretty big problem for the Southeast asian countries that are further downstream.

The existing dams in the lower Mekong basin today generate about 12,285 megawatts of total power on average, which is a lot.

But those 11 chinese dams on the land King in the upper basin where the water flow is faster generate an astounding 31,605 megawatts of power.

When combined, all of these dams on the Mekong generate about 44,000 megawatts of power, which is enough to provide the entire electricity needs of the whole region and is enough to power the entirety of New york city four times over.

And while all of this energy is theoretically clean, the big problem is that these dams are coming at an ever increasing environmental cost, made even worse by the fact that the area around the Mekong River is currently suffering from historically low water levels and drought just a couple years ago, cambodia, one of the countries that's the furthest downstream, had to completely shut down their largest dams due to a crippling lack of water flow, which caused the country to endear months of debilitating electricity blackouts and caused major disruptions across the Cambodian economy.

Additionally, due to the lower water levels and pressure coming from upstream, saltwater from the south china sea has been able to intrude into the Mekong River delta in southern Vietnam, devastating Vietnamese farmland and causing fishing stocks in the southern region from there to cambodia to be depleted by as much as 90%.

And while there are other, more natural factors that are contributing to the death of the Mekong, like the recent lower than average rainfall, a significant share of the responsibility also falls on Beijing and their management of the upper Mekong and source of the river itself.

In Tibet.

With so many dams constructed along the main path of the river just over the past couple of decades, it's not hard to see that the natural flow of the river has been dramatically clogged up.

You see prior to any of the dam construction here before the 19 nineties, the natural cycle of the river would have its water levels rise and fall based upon the season during the winter months of the monsoon and rainy season between june and october.

The Mekong would be extremely full of water and fish, often reaching depths as great as seven or eight m.

This flow would be even further compounded by the melting of the Himalayan snow and ice up in the Tibetan plateau near to the river source, which would sometimes push the water levels even higher and caused the lower Mekong basin of flood depositing rich sediments upon the area's fertile floodplains.

In the process for context, the Mekong River delta region in Vietnam produces half of Vietnam's entire rice export and 70% of their fruit and fish export and is now in a lot of danger for environmental collapse.

And of course, the natural rhythm of the river that has been in place for thousands of years has now been almost completely interrupted.

As the dams were constructed along the river's main path in the north.

Within china, enormous amounts of water began to be held back, which means that during the wet season, when the communities further downstream, we're expecting peak water heights that came up dramatically short, often as much as five m less of water than what could previously have been regularly counted upon.

And at no point was this ever more evident than just three years ago.

Back in 2019, when the Mekong River reached some of its lowest levels ever seen on record, you see, while the Land King in the North, typically throughout most of the year, contributes just a small portion of the water flow further downstream, as little as 15% it contributes significantly more.

During the dry season months between november and april when as much as half of the lower Mekong's water comes from sources within china with very high snow and ice melt in the Chinese Himalayas.

That year, more water than ever was held back within the land Kane, causing devastating changes in the water levels further downstream, where they peaked at just a few meters in height.

In fact, in july of that year, the levels in the lower river got so atypically shallow that the thai government had to actually mobilized its army in order to conduct relief operations.

And then of course things got even worse during the later dry season months of that year, when the lower river's water levels are already expected to be depleted naturally.

Sometimes with little warning, the chinese dams will suddenly just released staggering volumes of water down through their dams on the land Kane and towards the lower Mekong flooding communities up to the lower delta in Southeast Asia who are given little or no time at all to fully prepare for the sudden onslaught of water.

And then for state security purposes, Beijing considers its entire nationwide water management strategy a very closely guarded secret, including its management of the land Kane.

And so despite many efforts made by the other nations further downstream around the Mekong to work together and manage the river through organizations like the Mekong River Commission china has thus far declined to ever join.

The reality today is that the lower Mekong basin is entering its fourth straight year of severe drought with poorer than average rainfall, the ever advancing threat of climate change and a series of massive hydropower dams collectively causing all of these problems for the asian continents, third largest waterway, the livelihoods of more than 70 million people are at a serious risk of instability or even collapse.

Important steps are going to need to be taken by them And China in order to preserve the river, its natural rhythm and its natural resources.

Now, as I mentioned, 20% of the world's supply of freshwater fish that we collectively eat as a species comes from just the Mekong River alone.

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