Mekong-ASEAN Environmental Week (MAEW) 2026
People’s Currents: From Local Resistance to Collective Power
Thammasat University, Bangkok (Thaprachan Campus)
23-26 September 2026
Please stay tuned for our upcoming program.
This year, MAEW 2026 will be back with the theme “People’s Currents: From Local Resistance to Collective Power”.
Why “People’s Currents”?
People’s struggles are much like the flow of rivers.
Streams of resistance from many regions, including the Mekong River Basin, Southeast Asia, and their allies
in East Asia and Latin America, have converged and become part of a global movement to protect natural resources from extraction, destructive production systems, and the flows of capital embedded in global value chains, while confronting projects that continue to impact people’s ways of life.
As MAEW enters its eighth year, we believe this is the moment to intentionally place “the people”, not institutions, markets, or state-led narratives, at the center of our regional imagination and collective action.
What do we mean by people?
“People’s” recognizes that those who live closest to the land, water, forests, and territories are not victims to be represented, but knowledge holders, organizers, visionaries, and leaders of just transitions.
“People’s” also acknowledges that today’s struggles are no longer isolated by geography or by issue. The fight against dams in the Mekong, mining in Myanmar, plantation expansion in Indonesia, and land grabbing elsewhere are increasingly connected by the same flows of capital, extraction, and political power.
In this context, “People’s Currents” symbolizes not only the flow of rivers, but also the flow of resistance, memory, knowledge, courage, solidarity, and imagination across borders, generations, and movements.