A forum by the East-West Center in Washington "Hydropower Dams on the Mekong River: A Threat to the River, People, and Regional Stability" Guest: Dr. Richard P. Cronin, Director of the Southeast Asia Program, Henry L. Stimson Center   The construction of hydropower dams on the Mekong River promises needed economic development for China and five Southeast Asian countries that share the "Mother of Rivers" but at a high cost to millions of people whose livelihoods depend on its rich fisheries and seasonal floods. China's development of 8 to 15 dams in Yunnan and plans for 9 to 12 dams on the Lower Mekong in Laos and Cambodia will severely affect critical migratory fisheries and Vietnam's Mekong Delta. Stimson's Mekong Hydropower Transparency Project seeks to promote better decision-making by regional countries by combining sophisticated Geographic Information System (GIS) technology and animation to bridge the science-policy gap. Dr. Richard P. Cronin, director of Stimson's Southeast Asia Program, will share some of the project's animation work and discuss the environmental and socioeconomic implications, as well as the potential threat to regional stability, of the current uncoordinated rush to build hydropower dams on the Mekong's mainstream. Wednesday, April 22 Dr. Richard P. Cronin is a senior associate and head of the Southeast Asia program at the Henry L. Stimson Center. Currently, he is working issues concerning the Mekong Basin, China-Southeast Asian relations, US-ASEAN relations, and the regional impact of the global economic crisis. Dr. Cronin joined the Stimson Center after a long career as senior Asian affairs specialist at the Congressional Research Service (CRS) of the Library of Congress, where his research and research management responsibilities spanned the entire range of U.S.-Asia policy issues. Cronin has taught comparative political economy of Asia at Washington area universities and in Tokyo, and lectured extensively on Asian political and security issues at the National Defense University, the Foreign Service Institute, and in more than a dozen Asia-Pacific countries. This video was filmed and produced by Aaron Siirila and Nicholas Irwin, East-West Center.