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The environmental issues of hydroelectric development on the main channel of the Mekong River have become an important subject of debate between the riparian countries and environmental experts and activists, most being Western. At the national level, the question of the poorly coordinated management of dam projects along the Mekong River course triggered protest movements within civil society, but it does not lead to a weakening of hydroelectric development policies. This is because, on the one hand, governments have not relented their desire to control the management of the resources of the basin, despite civil protests; and, on the other hand, the inability of the Mekong River Commission (MRC), despite a legitimate institutional framework, to develop a binding legal framework. This contributes to the gradual erosion of the Commission’s relevance in the eyes of its members, international donors and China, the latter now proposing its own model of South-South cooperation, the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Initiative.