Risk or reward: Hydropower impacts on supply chains in the Lower Mekong Basin

Hydropower investments in the Lower Mekong region come with the promise of clean energy and positive projected economic value of up to US$33 billion (MRC, 2017), but the substantial threats posed to the Mekong’s dynamic ecological system by dams calls these purported benefits into question. With multi-billion-dollar industries dependent on a healthy, free-flowing river, governments, investors, and businesses must consider the systemic threats posed by continued hydropower development to supply chains in the region, and ask: Is the reward worth the risk? Although the Mekong region’s economy has grown rapidly in recent decades, this economic growth has come with significant environmental and social costs; uncoordinated infrastructure development has fragmented and polluted the river’s natural processes, undermining the basin’s immense biodiversity and productivity, while communities have faced displacement and inequitable sharing of the economic benefits of hydropower.