“Without knowing it, we utilize hundreds of products each day that owe their origin to wild animals and plants. Indeed our welfare is intimately tied up with the welfare of wildlife. Well may conservationists proclaim that by saving the lives of wild species, we may be saving our own.”
Norman Myers, A Wealth of Wild Species (1983)

The Mekong watershed is unusual in that it includes only nine large cities and no mega-cities. Few other major watershed systems can make such a statement. Human populations in this region are largely rural farmers. Many of the farmers practice traditional cultivation systems utilizing complex ecosystem gradients of forests to wetlands. Although this type of agroforestry system has been examined for a few cultures, none have been studied in depth. Rich comparative analyses are possible as there are more than one hundred cultural groups, speaking languages from five major language families, in the Mekong watershed. This is one of the most diverse cultural regions on Earth.

The Mekong watershed holds two Biodiversity Hotspots. It includes the western half of the Mountains of Southwest China Biodiversity Hotspot (high altitude temperate and alpine zones) and runs through the core of the Indo-Burma Biodiversity Hotspot (mid and lower altitude tropical zones). The total biodiversity within the watershed has never been calculated but is likely to be among the most diverse on Earth. The diversity is linked to the extreme ecological gradient from the high Tibetan plateau with a tundra environment to the humid rainforest tropics of the Vietnamese Mekong delta.

The Mekong watershed is expected to be dramatically impacted by global climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has pointed out that the glaciers in the Eastern Himalayas (Mekong headwaters) will melt and there will be dramatic shifts in monsoon rainfall patterns changing the lives and livelihoods of people throughout SE Asia.

Mekong Characteristics

• River Length: ~4909 km
• Watershed Area: 805,604 km2
• Forest Cover: 41.5% Cropland Area: 37.8%
• Urban/Industrial Area: 2.1%
• Large Cities: 9
• Population Density: 71/km2
• Heavy reliance on swidden agriculture and family farms

Source: IUCN Water Resources Atlas 2003