Environment and natural resources
Climate change
Climate change: efforts to halt rise in global temperatures may be too late to save key glaciers, report warns
Glaciers in UN World Heritage sites are among those likely to disappear by 2050 as a result of global warming – regardless of efforts to limit the rise in global temperatures, scientists have warned. Researchers fear their loss is likely to have a devastating impact on vital waterways ...
Holly Chik
Vietnam struggles to break one of world's biggest coal addictions
Despite Vietnam’s solar boom and ambitious climate targets, the fast-growing economy is struggling to quit dirty energy – leaving one of the world’s biggest coal power programmes largely intact. During the COP26 climate summit last year, the government boldly promised to end the construction of new ...
AFP/fh
Climate change and dams force older residents to leave Vietnam’s Mekong Delta
At 63, Nguyen Thi Ngoc got her first full-time ‘company’ job as a security guard in Ho Chi Minh City. She’d never been to a city before taking the job in early 2021, but the former farmer, originally from the Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam, ...
Nhung Nguyen
Cambodia Microfinance Should be Taxed to Address Climate Change Impact, Research Says
New research from Cambodia challenges the microfinance industry’s assertions that its loans help farmers to resist the impacts of climate change. In fact, the research argues, microfinance undermines the capacity of farmers to respond to unstable climate conditions. The profit from Cambodia generated by foreign-owned microfinance ...
David Whitehouse
Rising Salinity Threatens Rice Crops on Southeast Asia’s Sinking Coast
Prak Nhorn has no hope for his rice crop this year. “When I transplant seedlings, they die out. The salt is still in the soil,” said the farmer from Slab Ta Aon village, a riverside settlement roughly 150 kilometers southwest of Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, and ...
Elise Cutts
New climate policy fails to sway critics
The government is setting out major bureaucratic changes with the introduction of the Climate Change Act and the founding of the Department of Climate Change, which will be the new legal tool and central agency to oversee the country’s climate actions. Speaking at the Thailand Climate ...
PRATCH RUJIVANAROM
Explainer: What is ecocide?
What is ecocide? In short, ecocide refers to the mass destruction of ecosystems. Formally, it is defined as “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts”. ...
Kate Yeo
Rains quell fire risk around Cambodia’s Tonle Sap, but the future looks fiery
The roots of the forests surrounding Cambodia’s Tonle Sap lake spend half the year submerged in water. But in the past five years, they’ve been catching fire in the arid heat of the dry season. The government has rolled out plans to respond to these ...
Danielle Keeton-Olsen
US pledges assistance for Vietnam’s climate change adaptation
Receiving visiting Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh in Boston on May 14 (local time), Kerry expressed his impression of Vietnam’s COP26 commitments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2025, as well its approach to energy transformation and climate change response. He assured Chinh ...
Agriculture Ministry issues water plan as rainy season looms
Farmers should also store as much rainwater as possible and use it efficiently, said Agriculture Minister Chalermchai Sree-on on Monday. “We cannot tell how many storms will hit Thailand this year, but we have ordered RID to prepare personnel and drainage equipment to deal with upcoming ...
The Nation