Mining activities pollute the waters of the Kok River in Thailand

Driven by the global race for minerals of the utmost strategic importance, transboundary pollution is poisoning Thailand’s waterways, disrupting the country’s tourism sector, and making communities downstream of the Kok River pay the price of a high-stakes geopolitical conflict. The Kok River originates in Myanmar’s mountainous Shan State, flows into northern Thailand, and has long been a lifeline for communities that depend on fishing, agriculture, and tourism.

But recently, researchers and political analysts have confirmed that there is increasing evidence of a boom in the unregulated extraction of rare metals and gold across the border in Myanmar, as it is a major source of pollution, leading to the leakage of heavy metals and toxic waste into the Kok River, which is an important tributary of the Mekong River, and the river, which is usually clear during the dry season in the first half of the year, has now become polluted.

An analysis by the Stimson Research Center in the United States, using high-resolution satellite images and field data, identified dozens of new mining sites in Myanmar’s Shan State.

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