The Mekong River is divided into upper and the lower basins. The upper basin falls mainly within China’s borders and its upstream location effectively allows for a chokehold on the river’s lower riparian states. China’s effects on the river are most evident in its extensive dam projects--hydropower is second only to coal as the country’s largest energy source. This represents a larger shift by the government toward renewable energy in the wake of rapid environmental decline and social unrest due to air pollution in recent years. Luckily for China, authoritarian governments have a much easier time than democracies commissioning dams, which often cause mass displacement of populations and destruction of local ecosystems. China currently has seven dams completed in the upper basin, with another 20 set to be finished in the near future.

The prospect of developing the Lower Mekong River's hydropower potential has long been of interest to governments in the region with plans being drafted as early as 1960. However, the process was begun in earnest in mid-2006, when the Governments of Cambodia, Laos and Thailand granted approval to Thai, Malaysian, Vietnamese, and Chinese companies to investigate eleven mainstream hydropower dams.  If all of these projects are built they will transform the one of the world’s most iconic rivers, and the second most biodiversity river globally, into a series of reservoirs. Xayaburi and Don Sahong have already begun construction and preparatory work has commenced for Pak Beng, the third dam to move forward on the Mekong mainstream. These three dams alone are predicted to have negative transboundary impacts on the environment and people through the Mekong Basin. If the remaining eight proposed dams are built, they seriously jeopardize the future of the Mekong as a life-sustaining ecosystem.

The rapid expansion of hydropower and its predicted irreversible transboundary impacts on the environment and people across the region who depend on the Mekong River, threatens the development of all countries who share the Lower Mekong Basin, with downstream Cambodia and Vietnam at greatest risk. By changing the river's hydrology, blocking fish migration and affecting the river's ecology, the construction of dams on the Lower Mekong mainstream will have repercussions throughout the entire basin.