Environment and natural resources
Forests and forestry
Lao PDR and World Bank sign $42 deal to reduce emissions from deforestation
The Lao PDR and the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) have signed an agreement to provide up to $42 million between now and 2025 to support the country’s efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+). A ceremony today marked the launch of this ...
Drones aid Thailand’s reforestation
Across the world, communities are fighting to restore tree cover. Biodiversity loss and efforts to mitigate climate change are driving forces for this renewed interest in forests. However, the high costs in developing economies and poor political resolve in wealthy nations continue to hinder reforestation ...
Alita Sharon
Parks Dept rejects Karen call to return
The Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation (DNP) has rejected a request by a group of evicted Karen villagers to be allowed to resettle in their ancestral home deep into a forest at the Kaeng Krachan National Park in Phetchaburi. “As long as there ...
APINYA WIPATAYOTIN
Award-winning Thai community continues the fight to save its wetland forest
Srongpol Chantharueang remembers his parents telling him as a boy always to protect the local wetland forest when he grew up. They told him that the ecosystem would be important for his life and that of his community. “I didn’t understand what they meant at ...
Carolyn Cowan
Myanmar migratory bird census to be taken by locals
The Asian migratory bird census which is usually conducted yearly will be taken in collaboration with local communities in Myanmar this year, said Daw Thiri Daewi Aung, executive director at Biodiversity and Nature Conservation Association (BANCA). “Normally, the migratory bird census is taken in the second ...
Phyo Wai Kyaw
Endangered crane absent from Vietnam's Ramsar site
Losing their natural habitat and food source, red-crowned cranes no longer call a national park in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta home. For three decades, Tram Chim National Park in the reed fields of Dong Thap Muoi in Dong Thap Province has been famous as a natural habitat ...
Hoang Nam
Angkor sells out: Cambodia turns a blind eye to vanishing forests
A series of reports this year show that protected forest areas across Cambodia are under increasing threat from land grabs and deforestation. As Cambodians struggle with the economic impacts of COVID-19, journalists and advocates report that illegal logging and land development continues, from central Cambodia’s Prey Lang Forest to the Cardamom Mountains ...
Editorial
Alleged gov’t-linked land grabs threaten Cambodia’s Cardamom Mountains
Rising across remote stretches of southeast Cambodia, the Cardamom Mountains harbor dense tropical rainforest, much of it native growth carpeting the range’s wet slopes. Due to its remoteness, the vast protected area has historically seen relatively little human activity, which helped safeguard crucial tracts of ...
CHRIS HUMPHREY
Thai teak seized in SorPorKor raid north of Patong
The Forestry officials, along with police from the Natural Resources and Environmental Crime Suppression Division seized sawn pieces of timber valued at about B60,000 at the site, located in the hills on Phra Barami Soi 7. Boonlarp Suksai, Chief of the Royal Forestry Department Region 12 ...
The Phuket News
New resources for forest protection
Vietnam has entered the world’s carbon credit trading market after a long period striving for sustainable forest management. This is a major event, marking a positive start in mobilising new resources for forest protection and improving forest quality and sustainable forest management, thereby helping Vietnam ...