Picture of the Week 13.10.14 – The Corridor of Opportunity
By Tessa Bunney on 13 October 2014
A Tai Lue boy fishing in the Nam Lan river (a tributary of the Nam Ou), Phongsaly province, Lao PDR.
The 425km Nam Ou, one of the Mekong River’s major tributaries, connects small riverside villages and provides the rural population with food from fishing. It is a place where children play and families bathe, where men fish and women wash their clothes.
But this river and others like it, that are the lifeline of rural communities and local economies are being blocked, diverted and decimated by dams. The Lao government hopes to transform the country into ‘ the battery of Southeast Asia’ by exporting the power to Thailand and Vietnam.
On Thursday I will be heading back to the Nam Ou river to continue working on this project.