Mekong—The Occluding River

Mekong—The Occluding River PDF Author: Ngo The Vinh
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1450239374
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
Part travelogue, part history, and part environmental treatise, Mekong The Occluding River is above all else an urgent warning that factors such as pollution, ecological devastation, and the depletion of natural resources are threatening the very existence of the Mekong River. Author Ngo The Vinh combines his vivid travel notes and collection of photographs with a meticulously researched history of the environmental degradation of the Mekong River. Translated from Vietnamese, the best-selling treatise outlines the myriad threats facing the river today. From oil shipments feeding the industrial cities of southwestern China to gigantic hydroelectric dams known as the Mekong Cascades in Yunnan province, China is the worst environmental offender, though the other nations along Mekongs banks behave no better. From Thailand to Laos to Vietnam, hydroelectric dams that threaten the Mekong and its inhabitants are being built at an alarming rate. To save the Mekong, Ngo The Vinh calls upon all the nations that benefit from its life-giving water to observe the Spirit of the Mekong in the implementation of all future development projects. To achieve this end, there must be a concerted and sustained commitment to cooperation and sustainability. At this critical cross-roads, we should remind ourselves of the mantra from Sea World San Diego: Extinction is forever. Endangered means we still have time.

Mekong—The Occluding River

Mekong—The Occluding River PDF Author: Ngo The Vinh
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1450239374
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 245

Get Book Here

Book Description
Part travelogue, part history, and part environmental treatise, Mekong The Occluding River is above all else an urgent warning that factors such as pollution, ecological devastation, and the depletion of natural resources are threatening the very existence of the Mekong River. Author Ngo The Vinh combines his vivid travel notes and collection of photographs with a meticulously researched history of the environmental degradation of the Mekong River. Translated from Vietnamese, the best-selling treatise outlines the myriad threats facing the river today. From oil shipments feeding the industrial cities of southwestern China to gigantic hydroelectric dams known as the Mekong Cascades in Yunnan province, China is the worst environmental offender, though the other nations along Mekongs banks behave no better. From Thailand to Laos to Vietnam, hydroelectric dams that threaten the Mekong and its inhabitants are being built at an alarming rate. To save the Mekong, Ngo The Vinh calls upon all the nations that benefit from its life-giving water to observe the Spirit of the Mekong in the implementation of all future development projects. To achieve this end, there must be a concerted and sustained commitment to cooperation and sustainability. At this critical cross-roads, we should remind ourselves of the mantra from Sea World San Diego: Extinction is forever. Endangered means we still have time.

Mekong Dreaming

Mekong Dreaming PDF Author: Andrew Alan Johnson
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478012358
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 127

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Book Description
The Mekong River has undergone vast infrastructural changes in recent years, including the construction of dams across its main stream. These projects, along with the introduction of new fish species, changing political fortunes, and international migrant labor, have all made a profound impact upon the lives of those residing on the great river. It also impacts how they dream. In Mekong Dreaming, Andrew Alan Johnson explores the changing relationship between the river and the residents of Ban Beuk, a village on the Thailand-Laos border, by focusing on the effect that construction has had on human and inhuman elements of the villagers' world. Johnson shows how inhabitants come to terms with the profound impact that remote, intangible, and yet powerful forces—from global markets and remote bureaucrats to ghosts, spirits, and gods—have on their livelihoods. Through dreams, migration, new religious practices, and new ways of dwelling on a changed river, inhabitants struggle to understand and affect the distant, the inassimilable, and the occult, which offer both sources of power and potential disaster.

The Mekong

The Mekong PDF Author: Milton Osborne
Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
ISBN: 0802196098
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
A “remarkable” history of the great river of Southeast Asia (Jill Ker Conway, author of The Road from Coorain). The Mekong River runs over nearly three thousand miles, beginning in the mountains of Tibet and flowing through China, Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam before emptying into the China Sea. Its waters are the lifeblood of Southeast Asia, and first begot civilization on the fertile banks of its delta region at Oc Eo nearly two millennia ago. This is the story of the peoples and cultures of the great river, from these obscure beginnings to the emergence of today’s independent nations. Drawing on research gathered over forty years, Milton Osborne traces the Mekong’s dramatic history through the rise and fall of civilizations and the era of colonization and exploration. He details the struggle for liberation during a twentieth century in which Southeast Asia has seen almost constant conflict, including two world wars, the Indochina War, the Vietnam War, and its bloody aftermath—and explores the prospects for peace and prosperity as the region enters a new millennium. Along the way, he brings to life those who witnessed and shaped events along the river, including Chou Ta-kuan, the thirteenth-century Chinese envoy who recorded the glory of Angkor Wat, the capital of the Khmer Empire; the Iberian mercenaries Blas Ruiz and Diego Veloso, whose involvement in the intrigues of Cambodia’s royal family shook Southeast Asia’s politics in the sixteenth century; and the revolutionaries led by Ho Chi Minh, whose campaigns to liberate Vietnam from the French and unify the nation under communism changed the course of history. “[A] pathbreaking, ecologically informed chronicle . . . A pulsating journey through the heart of Southeast Asia.” —Publishers Weekly

River Road to China

River Road to China PDF Author: Milton Osborne
Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
ISBN: 080219608X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
“A compelling, finely researched account of an adventure that was hailed as one of the grandest explorations of the nineteenth century.” —The Washington Post A New York Times Notable Book In 1866, six Frenchmen set out on a dangerous mission to seek a trade route up the Mekong. During the two years that followed, they would journey through more than four thousand miles of unmapped territory, from the tropical heat of the swamps of Vietnam and Cambodia to the bitter cold of the mountain ranges of southwestern China. Their historic expedition is the dramatic subject of River Road to China, a story of courage, endurance, and determination in the face of unpredictable dangers and near-insurmountable odds. This edition has been updated to include a new postscript by the author and more than thirty full-color illustrations by the expedition’s artist. “The highest of high adventure . . . [Osborne’s] documentation is flawless.” —The New Yorker “As exciting as it is historically illuminating . . . A tale of heroism that has seldom been duplicated, spurred by the continuing, fatal attraction of the ‘Great River.’” —The New Republic

River Road to China

River Road to China PDF Author: Milton E. Osborne
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : China
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Narrative of the nineteenth century expedition along the Mekong River.

Meltdown in Tibet

Meltdown in Tibet PDF Author: Michael Buckley
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1137474726
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
Tibetans have experienced waves of genocide since the 1950s. Now they are facing ecocide. The Himalayan snowcaps are in meltdown mode, due to climate change—accelerated by a rain of black soot from massive burning of coal and other fuels in both China and India. The mighty rivers of Tibet are being dammed by Chinese engineering consortiums to feed the mainland's thirst for power, and the land is being relentlessly mined in search of minerals to feed China's industrial complex. On the drawing board are plans for a massive engineering project to divert water from Eastern Tibet to water-starved Northern China. Ruthless Chinese repression leaves Tibetans powerless to stop the reckless destruction of their sacred land, but they are not the only victims of this campaign: the nations downstream from Tibet rely heavily on rivers sourced in Tibet for water supply, and for rich silt used in agriculture. This destruction of the region's environment has been happening with little scrutiny until now. In Meltdown in Tibet, Michael Buckley turns the spotlight on the darkest side of China's emergence as a global super power.

Mekong

Mekong PDF Author: Milton Osborne
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 1741764610
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
The Mekong is one of the world's great rivers, and by far the largest in Southeast Asia. Empires have risen and fallen in the lands through which the Mekong flows and it has been linked to remarkable adventure and exploration as well as war and massacre. Now that Indochina is at peace, new dangers threaten the river's future. For more than forty years Milton Osborne has been fascinated by the Mekong and its history. He has lived beside it, travelled on it and written an acclaimed account of its exploration in the nineteenth century. Here he recounts the history of the river from its earliest times to the present, a history full of the stories of remarkable men-Spanish and Portuguese freebooters and missionaries who briefly held the fate of Cambodia in their hands; French explorers who were recognised in the nineteenth century as the equal of Burton and Livingstone, but are now largely forgotten even in France; a martyred Cambodian monsignor and an Australian-educated Vietnamese reflecting on communist rule. In the present century the Mekong has been at the heart of two wars, while one of the lands along its course, Cambodia, witnessed the terrible tyranny of the Pol Pot regime. While the author's own original research has shaped his writing on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the book is a masterly distillation of the river's history from the earliest times to the present. A new chapter brings this edition up to date on recent developments in the region.

Last Days of the Mighty Mekong

Last Days of the Mighty Mekong PDF Author: Brian Eyler
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
ISBN: 178360722X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
Celebrated for its natural beauty and its abundance of wildlife, the Mekong river runs thousands of miles through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Its basin is home to more than 70 million people and has for centuries been one of the world's richest agricultural areas and a biodynamic wonder. Today, however, it is undergoing profound changes. Development policies, led by a rising China in particular, aim to interconnect the region and urbanize the inhabitants. And a series of dams will harness the river's energy, while also stymieing its natural cycles and cutting off food supplies for swathes of the population. In Last Days of the Mighty Mekong, Brian Eyler travels from the river's headwaters in China to its delta in southern Vietnam to explore its modern evolution. Along the way he meets the region’s diverse peoples, from villagers to community leaders, politicians to policy makers. Through conversations with them he reveals the urgent struggle to save the Mekong and its unique ecosystem.

Mekong, the Last River

Mekong, the Last River PDF Author: Kenji Aoyagi
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781569310892
Category : Mekong River
Languages : en
Pages : 142

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Book Description
When Myanmar (formerly Burma) opened its borders in 1992, the last obstacle to traversing the entire length of the Southeast Asian Mekong River fell, and photographer Kenji Aoyagi was finally able to complete his decade-long odyssey down this immense, fabled waterway. His photographs provide a breathtaking paean to the magnificent Mekong in its pristine state and the age-old cultures of the ethnic minorities who live along its banks. In Southeast Asia, the gradual resolution of political conflicts has brought about explosive economic growth, and with it the ravages of industrialization and pollution. This photographic collection is the first - and will probably be the last - record of the unspoiled beauty of the Mekong and its people. Mekong, The Last River provides a final glimpse into the traditions of the indigenous peoples whose ways of life, so intimately linked to the river, will soon be irrevocably changed forever.

River Road to China

River Road to China PDF Author: Milton E. Osborne
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : China
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description