Environment and natural resources
Forests and forestry
ADB supports sustainable biodiversity management
The Asian Development Bank has approved US$12.8 million in additional financing for the ongoing Biodiversity Conservation Corridors Project in Laos. The grant assistance is sourced from ADB’s Strategic Climate Fund, Forest Investment Programme. The grant agreement was signed in Vientiane on October 18, inked by Deputy Minister ...
Attapeu airport potential examined during PM's visit
Attapeu International Airport may become more widely used in order to boost air transportation within Laos and the region. Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith visited Attapeu province on October 15-16 for a working visit to discuss the future of the airport with provincial authorities after it opened for ...
Mongla: ‘the wildlife trafficking capital of the world’
Mongla lies on the border of the Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture in southwestern China and Shan State in northeastern Myanmar. Situated in the heart of the Golden Triangle, the city is known among other sad epithets as the wildlife trafficking capital of the world and for drugs, gambling, ...
Airbus to marshal its satellites against deforestation
One of the world’s largest aerospace companies is enlisting its satellites in the fight to save forests. That’s the aim of Starling, a new service developed by Airbus Defence and Space, nonprofit The Forest Trust and remote-sensing specialist SarVision. Food giants Nestlé and Ferrero, two of the ...
Gov’t, Vietnam exchange blame on logging
Cambodian conservation officials spoke publicly for the first time on October 10 about what they described as nearly three years of corrupt practices by their Vietnamese counterparts in facilitating the multibillion-dollar illicit trade in Siamese rosewood. But their complaint comes amid allegations from Hanoi that ...
Scoring palm oil buyers on their sustainability commitments
2015 was supposed to be a big year for the palm oil industry — the year it proposed to reach a “tipping point” and begin predominantly producing and trading palm oil that was not responsible for the destruction of forests, abuses of human rights, and ...
EU provides satellite training for Forestry Administration
The European Union has begun training Cambodia’s Forestry Administration to use satellite imagery to crack down on deforestation. Members of the EU’s Joint Research Centre have been meeting with forestry officials since September 26, teaching them how to analyse images captured by the EU’s Sentinel-2 satellite ...
Govt vows to standardise wood processing plants
The government has instructed authorities in charge to inspect wood processing plants nationwide to ensure the plants’ operations meet production and environmental quality standards. Inspection will be launched into all licensed 1,595 plants across the country and a number of criteria will be used to assess ...
Civet species thought to be extinct found in central Vietnam
The large-spotted civet species recently discovered in the Phong Dien Nature Reserve in Hue city was previously considered to be extinct in Vietnam and China by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. According to the Forest Protection Department of Thua Thien – Hue province, ...
Pulp and paper supplier denies draining peat on island near Singapore
A NASA satellite detected 140 hotspots in West Kalimantan on September 12 as smallholders in the province continued to burn land for agriculture, Indonesia’s disaster management agency said on September 13. Data from Global Forest Watch shows the district of Ketapang recorded 144 fire alerts over the ...
