The Mekong Currency: Lives and Times of a River

The Mekong Currency; lives and times of a river captures in poignant texts and intimate photo's the life of South-East Asia's mightiest river. Millions of people in Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam enjoy its wealth of fish, floodwaters and fertile mudplains.

The river and its people are under direct threat. Prestigious dam projects are planned, which will alter the character of the river, affect the supply of water downstream, and force hundreds of thousands of people to resettle. The economic benefits of the dam projects are dubious. Controversy on the value of dams rages both in the North and the South, as the wealth generated by large dams usually flows to urban and industrial elites and influential landowners, at the expense of rural communities.

Liesbeth Sluiter, writer and photo-journalist, spent a year following the Mekong and capturing the portraits in this book. Grainne Ryder, water resources engineer, works with the Project for Ecological Recovery in Thailand. They ask the reader to discover the issues. Above all, they invite us to look at the Mekong from the perspective of the farmers and fishers, whose livelihoods are sustained by the Mekong, who know the river's currency best and value it for all it is worth.