A monsoon storm brewed above Boonrat Chaikeaw as he cast his net into the endless tide of trash in the Mekong River on one day in June. He brought home more plastic than fish over six trips into the polluted waters of the Golden Triangle between Thailand, Myanmar and Laos.
Below the Golden Triangle, at the center of the river’s lower basin, children swam among plastic debris as workers cleared the riverbanks of Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh — with identical plastic pick-up efforts on Tonle Sap lake.
Further downstream, in Vietnam, the river spiderwebs into the tributaries, swamps and islands that comprise the Mekong Delta. In Can Tho, which lies along a Mekong tributary, fish farmers are relieved to no longer be living off a river besieged by plastic waste.
The Mekong River supports millions of people along its 4,300-kilometer (2,700-mile) path from its headwaters in the Tibetan Plateau through Southeast Asia and eventually into the South China Sea.
But its size and the politics of shared management has made it particularly susceptible to plastics pollution.
Globally, the Mekong river is , an independent environmental reporting and analysis nonprofit. RFA retains full editorial control of the work.
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