The Mekong Fails: A Cascade from River Engineering to Planetary Breakdown
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: This presentation argues that the degradation of the Mekong River is not an isolated regional crisis but an early signal of a broader planetary cascade. Beginning with hydropower dams, river diversions, sediment trapping, salinity intrusion, and the collapse of the Mekong’s flood pulse, the document traces how engineered disruption weakens fisheries, undermines delta agriculture, and pushes food production toward industrial aquaculture. That substitution links Southeast Asian food security to distant Pacific forage fish, particularly anchovy fisheries in the Humboldt Current, whose instability under El Niño and ocean warming exposes the fragility of global feed markets. The argument then widens to ocean carbon cycling, predator behaviour, AMOC risk, methane feedback, microplastic contamination, elite survival fantasies, and the social and biological conditions that may shape future resilience. Across these cases, the central claim is that rivers, oceans, climate systems, human bodies, food chains, and societies are connected by flows of water, sediment, protein, carbon, toxins, energy, and trust. When those flows are engineered, blocked, or contaminated, the effects do not remain local; they cascade through the planetary system.
Author: biswell, michael
Language: English
Subfield: Nature and Landscape Conservation
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7203874581
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