Mekong Evaluators Institute

As competition for critical minerals intensifies, a critical question is emerging across Southeast Asia:

Who bears the environmental and human rights costs of supplying the materials needed for the global energy transition?

A new analysis from Heinrich Böll Stiftung Southeast Asia and Senik Centre Asia examines how the United States is expanding resource partnerships across the region through bilateral agreements and the Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement (FORGE).

Much of the discussion focuses on supply chains, energy security, industrial policy, and geopolitical competition. But communities living closest to mines, processing facilities, transport corridors, and industrial zones often experience a different reality.

Across Southeast Asia, mineral extraction and processing are increasingly linked to concerns about land rights, pollution, displacement, worker safety, and risks faced by Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and environmental defenders.

The Mekong Region sits at the center of these pressures. Rare earth mining in Myanmar, emerging rare earth development in Thailand, and expanding supply chains tied to electric vehicles and renewable energy technologies are creating new environmental and governance challenges alongside economic opportunities.

As demand grows, governments, investors, and development partners must look beyond supply security alone. The energy transition should not come at the expense of environmental justice, human rights, meaningful community participation, or accountable governance.

The question is not only where these minerals will come from.

It is also whether the transition to a low-carbon economy will be fair for the people and ecosystems living on the frontlines of extraction.



Further reading:

US Resource Partnerships in Southeast Asia: What Is at Stake in Critical Minerals? | Heinrich Böll Foundation | Southeast Asia The United States (US) is forming resource partnerships in Southeast Asia, through bilateral critical minerals agreements, such as memoranda of understanding (MOUs) and agreements on reciprocal trade (ART), as well as through the Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement (FORGE), a US-led multilater...

The most important question raised by Cambodia's Funan Techo Canal may not be about the canal itself.

It may be about whether Mekong governance institutions remain capable of managing increasingly complex transboundary infrastructure projects.

The canal, which would connect the Mekong River system to the Gulf of Thailand, has sparked debate over potential impacts on water flows, fisheries, wetlands, livelihoods, and the Mekong Delta. But it has also exposed a deeper governance challenge.

Analysts have pointed to ambiguities within the 1995 Mekong Agreement, including the distinction between "tributary" and "mainstream" projects. Those ambiguities allowed the project to proceed through notification procedures rather than more robust consultation mechanisms, raising broader questions about accountability, transparency, and how transboundary impacts are assessed.

Reports from communities along the canal route also highlight ongoing concerns about displacement, compensation, and access to information.

As climate change, hydropower development, navigation projects, and water diversions place increasing pressure on the Mekong River, the challenge extends beyond any single project. The real test is whether regional institutions can provide credible mechanisms for managing shared resources, addressing disputes, and ensuring that affected communities have a meaningful voice in decisions that shape their futures.



Further reading:

Farmers fear displacement, drought, flooding tied to Cambodia’s Funan Techo Canal This is the second of two stories about the potential impact of Cambodia’s planned Funan Techo Canal. Read part one, about consequences for coastal communities and wildlife, here. TAKEO, Cambodia — Thet Chanton finally finished construction on his new home along the banks of the Prek Bassac (Bas...

A new report from the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) explores the growing use of artificial intelligence in efforts to combat environmental crime, including illegal logging, mining, wildlife trafficking, illegal fishing, and waste trafficking.

The report is particularly valuable because it avoids simplistic techno-optimism.

Environmental crime networks are increasingly transnational, adaptive, and technologically sophisticated, often operating across weak governance environments, fragmented jurisdictions, and under-resourced enforcement systems. AI tools may strengthen monitoring, intelligence analysis, and pattern detection, but the report argues that the greatest barriers to effective enforcement are ultimately structural rather than technical.

Across much of the Mekong Region and Southeast Asia, environmental crime persists not because of a lack of surveillance technology, but because of corruption, weak institutions, fragmented enforcement systems, limited cross-border coordination, political protection networks, unequal power dynamics, and insufficient accountability surrounding natural resource extraction and environmental harm.

The report also raises important concerns about uneven visibility and power. AI systems may increase scrutiny of small-scale actors, local communities, or artisanal resource users while more sophisticated criminal and financial networks remain less visible and less accountable.

As AI becomes increasingly integrated into environmental enforcement, governance, transparency, local ownership, human oversight, and rights protections will become just as important as technical capability itself.

Technology may strengthen enforcement capacity, but it cannot substitute for political will, accountable institutions, scientific integrity, investigative capacity, Indigenous and community knowledge, and meaningful environmental governance.

GI-TOC analysis:
https://globalinitiative.net/analysis/artificial-intelligence-for-environmental-crime-enforcement/

Artificial Intelligence for environmental crime enforcement AI is emerging as a tool in environmental crime enforcement, enabling large-scale data processing and pattern detection.

A growing debate in Viet Nam highlights an important challenge in environmental governance: ecological systems cannot simply be reorganized according to administrative efficiency targets.

Several Vietnamese conservation organizations are urging caution over proposals to merge protected areas, national parks, marine reserves, and wetland conservation sites as part of broader state restructuring efforts.

The organizations warn that “mechanical mergers” driven primarily by administrative streamlining could weaken biodiversity protection, disrupt ecosystem management, and undermine long-term conservation goals.

Protected areas that appear small or fragmented on paper may still contain irreplaceable ecosystems, migratory corridors, endemic species habitats, watershed forests, coral reef systems, and biodiversity with regional and global significance.

The debate raises broader questions relevant across the Mekong Region and Southeast Asia. As governments pursue institutional reform, infrastructure expansion, and economic growth, how can conservation governance remain grounded in ecological realities rather than narrow administrative logic?

As environmental pressures intensify across the region, effective conservation will require governance systems that recognize ecological interconnectedness, long-term stewardship, and the importance of scientifically grounded environmental management.

Source:

Vietnam Agriculture and Nature (VAN) – NGOs caution over planned merger of protected areas
https://van.nongnghiepmoitruong.vn/ngos-caution-over-planned-merger-of-protected-areas-d812625.html

NGOs caution over planned merger of protected areas (VAN) Several nature conservation organizations have called for careful consideration of plans to reorganize and merge national parks, nature reserves, marine protected areas, and wetland conservation sites.

As ASEAN continues developing regional environmental rights frameworks, an important question remains unresolved: who is included in environmental governance, and who remains peripheral to it?

Across Southeast Asia, Indigenous Peoples and forest-dependent communities remain central to sustaining biodiversity, protecting ecosystems, and maintaining long-standing systems of environmental stewardship. Yet regional and national policies still often fail to fully recognize Indigenous rights, customary tenure systems, and community-led governance.

Environmental rights frameworks matter. But their effectiveness will depend on whether they move beyond broad principles toward stronger land and resource rights, genuine participation in decision-making, accountability mechanisms, and recognition of Indigenous and local communities not simply as stakeholders, but as central actors in environmental governance.

As ecological pressures intensify across the Mekong Region and wider Southeast Asia, biodiversity protection, environmental justice, gender equity, and democratic governance will remain deeply interconnected.

Sources:

SEI – Advancing Indigenous Peoples’ Rights for Inclusive and Sustainable Environmental Governance in ASEAN
https://www.sei.org/publications/indigenous-peoples-rights-environmental-governance/

The ASEAN Declaration on Environmental Rights: whose rights and what rights?
https://weadapt.org/knowledge-base/governance-institutions-and-policy/the-asean-declaration-on-environmental-rights-whose-rights-and-what-rights/

The ASEAN Declaration on Environmental Rights: whose rights and what rights? Indigenous Peoples face huge challenges in participating in official decision-making processes. This piece explores how the ASEAN Declaration on Environmental Rights has provided few opportunities for Indigenous Peoples to fully and meaningfully engage with the first-ever regional instrument that br...

As ASEAN continues developing regional environmental rights frameworks, an important question remains unresolved: who is meaningfully included in environmental governance, and who remains peripheral to it?

Across Southeast Asia, Indigenous Peoples and forest-dependent communities continue to play a central role in sustaining biodiversity, protecting ecosystems, and maintaining long-standing systems of environmental stewardship. Yet regional and national policies still often fail to fully recognize Indigenous rights, customary tenure systems, and community-led governance.

Environmental rights frameworks matter. But their effectiveness will depend on whether they move beyond broad principles toward meaningful participation, stronger land and resource rights, accountability mechanisms, and recognition of Indigenous and local communities not simply as stakeholders, but as central actors in environmental governance.

As ecological pressures intensify across the Mekong Region and wider Southeast Asia, biodiversity protection, environmental justice, gender equity, and democratic governance will remain deeply interconnected.

Sources:

SEI – Advancing Indigenous Peoples’ Rights for Inclusive and Sustainable Environmental Governance in ASEAN
https://www.sei.org/publications/indigenous-peoples-rights-environmental-governance/

ASEAN Declaration on Environmental Rights discussion
https://weadapt.org/knowledge-base/governance-institutions-and-policy/the-asean-declaration-on-environmental-rights-whose-rights-and-what-rights/

Advancing Indigenous Peoples’ rights for inclusive and sustainable environmental governance in ASEAN In this policy brief, the authors discuss the need to support Indigenous Peoples' rights to ensure sustainable environmental governance in ASEAN policy.

A new regional report from IUCN and partners examines the growing push to mobilize large-scale finance for the protection of primary forests across Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

The report comes at a critical moment. The region’s remaining primary forests face escalating pressure from infrastructure expansion, extractive industries, industrial agriculture, land conversion, and fragmented governance systems, even as they remain globally significant for biodiversity, climate regulation, water systems, and Indigenous and forest-dependent communities.

Efforts to increase investment in forest protection and restoration are urgently needed. But financing alone will not resolve the structural drivers of forest loss.

Across much of the Mekong Region and Southeast Asia, durable forest protection requires stronger land tenure security, meaningful community participation, Indigenous stewardship, transparent governance, accountability for environmental harm, and development models that do not treat forests primarily as extractable economic assets.

As climate finance, biodiversity markets, and Nature-based Solutions continue expanding, ensuring affected communities retain meaningful decision-making power will be essential to both equity and long-term environmental integrity.

The scale of the ecological crisis requires not only significantly greater investment, but also significantly stronger governance and accountability.

Source:

IUCN / SEAP FIT Coalition – Financing the Future of Primary Forests in Southeast Asia and the Pacific
https://iucn.org/resources/jointly-published/financing-future-primary-forests-southeast-asia-and-pacific

Financing the Future of Primary Forests in Southeast Asia and the Pacific The Southeast Asia and the Pacific (SEAP) region is home to some of the world's most ecologically significant remaining tropical primary forests. This stocktaking report maps the current landscape of forest-related economic activity, financing mechanisms, and investment solutions, identifying both s...

On the International Day for Biological Diversity, it is worth remembering that biodiversity loss is rarely driven by isolated environmental factors alone.

Across the Mekong Region and Southeast Asia, pressures on forests, rivers, wetlands, fisheries, and coastal ecosystems are deeply connected to larger questions of governance, infrastructure development, land use, extractive industries, energy systems, and economic policy.

Many of the ecosystems now considered priorities for conservation have also long supported the livelihoods, food systems, cultural survival, and knowledge systems of Indigenous Peoples and forest-dependent communities. These communities have long served as some of the region’s most effective stewards of biodiversity and ecological stability.

Protecting biodiversity therefore requires more than conservation commitments or financing targets in isolation. It also depends on transparent governance, meaningful participation in decision-making, stronger land and resource rights, recognition of Indigenous stewardship, gender equity and the leadership of women in environmental governance, long-term ecological planning, and development approaches that recognize healthy ecosystems as foundational to social and economic stability.

As ecological pressures intensify across the region, biodiversity, environmental governance, and human well-being will remain closely interconnected.

Across the Mekong Region, rivers are increasingly being engineered to serve energy markets, infrastructure expansion, and regional growth models, while the environmental and social costs are pushed downstream.

New analysis on Cambodia’s flooded forests adds to growing evidence that upstream dam operations are reshaping the hydrological systems that sustain fisheries, biodiversity, sediment flows, and seasonal ecosystems relied upon by millions of people.

These flooded forests are not peripheral ecosystems. They are foundational to regional food security, livelihoods, and ecological stability.

Yet decisions with profound transboundary consequences continue to be shaped through opaque infrastructure planning, weak accountability mechanisms, and development agendas heavily influenced by state interests, international financial institutions, and large-scale initiatives such as China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

The Mekong River Commission was intended to support cooperative river governance, but many critics argue that existing regional mechanisms remain too weak and politically constrained to meaningfully address the scale of ecological disruption unfolding across the basin.

As the Mekong becomes increasingly fragmented and engineered, the central question is no longer whether development will occur, but who bears the risks, who captures the benefits, and whose voices are excluded from decision-making.

Sources:

Stimson Center – Engineering the Mekong: How Upstream Dams Are Reshaping Cambodia’s Flooded Forests
https://www.stimson.org/2026/engineering-the-mekong-how-upstream-dams-are-reshaping-cambodias-flooded-forests/

Bangkok Tribune – Mekong in Peril Series
https://bkktribune.com/special-report-series-mekong-in-peril/

Engineering the Mekong: How Upstream Dams are Reshaping Cambodia’s Flooded Forests • Stimson Center Examining how dam driven river changes are harming a Mekong flooded forest and how smarter water management could help reverse losses.

Debates surrounding Cambodia’s Environment and Natural Resources Code continue to raise important questions about transparency, public participation, and community rights over land and natural resources across the Mekong Region.

While the Code has been presented as a major modernization of environmental governance, Indigenous organizations and civil society groups have also raised concerns about customary land rights, public participation, and the broader balance of power between affected communities, state institutions, and private interests.

These are not abstract legal debates. They directly influence whether communities can defend customary lands from outside concessionaires, maintain access to forests, fisheries, and farmland, and meaningfully influence decisions that may permanently reshape local territories and ecosystems.

Across much of the Mekong Region, the imbalance in political and economic power between affected communities and state or corporate actors remains stark.

Sources:

Open Development Cambodia – Environment and Natural Resources
https://opendevelopmentcambodia.net/topics/environment-and-natural-resources/

IWGIA – The Indigenous World 2024: Cambodia
https://iwgia.org/en/cambodia/5364-iw-2024-cambodia.html

ClientEarth Asia – Cambodia’s Environment and Natural Resources Code
https://www.clientearth.asia/latest/news/environment-and-natural-resources-code-officially-announced-in-the-kingdom-of-cambodia/

Environment and natural resources Around three quarters of Cambodia’s population depend on agriculture, forest products and fisheries for their livelihoods, so the management of the environment and natural resources is of great importance. Deforestation has occurred on a large scale. Cambodia lost six percent of its remaining prim...