Environment and natural resources

Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI) has urged the government to include waste management as part of the national agenda and proposed the government ban foam usage and make consumers pay for plastic shopping bags. Somkiat Tangkitvanich, president of the TDRI, said the group’s study found Thailand’s ...

Authorities urged residents living along the Mekong River in Stung Treng, Kratie and Kampong Cham provinces to be vigilant as water levels rise perilously close to meriting an emergency declaration. On Sunday, water levels in Stung Treng province were just 20cm shy of an emergency declaration ...

Water Resources and Meteorology Minister Lim Kean Hor has ordered all provincial department directors to be prepared for Mekong river floods as water from the river has started to overflow. Ya Voeun, Tboung Khmum provincial water department director, yesterday said that the water level of the ...

The one-two gut punch of dead, adorable sea creatures may be met with calls of action, but a young Thai climate crusader worries it won’t shock society into sustained action. Nanticha “Lynn” Ocharoenchai, who is organizing Bangkok’s third Climate Strike rally next month,  said it’s high ...

Greenpeace has proposed an indiscriminately-implemented collection fee as a means to eradicate single-use plastic bags and containers from disposal, as well as to establish an independent fund for rehabilitation of Thailand’s seas. The popular environmental group’s proposal comes on the heels of the deaths of two ...

In a rare ruling, a court in Cambodia has decided to acquit a Spanish environmental activist charged with incitement, the state’s default accusation against most forms of protest. Alejandro-Gonzalez Davidson, the founder of the NGO Mother Nature Cambodia (MNC), stood accused of acting as an accomplice ...

A stunning 12 million people could be displaced by flooding in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta within half a century, according to new research led by Philip Minderhoud, a geographer at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Minderhoud and his colleagues arrived at that surprising conclusion after analyzing ...

The Mekong is reeling from the combined onslaught of climate change, sand-mining, and incessant damming of the river, which combined to help cause the worst drought recorded in over 100 years in July. “This is the worst ecological disaster in history of the of Mekong region,” declared Thai ...

When Charcoal burners began casting covetous eyes over the mangrove forest next to coastal Kanyin Chaung village in Tanintharyi Region, its residents joined forces to protect a natural resource that had served their community for generations. The threat emerged in about 2005 and it worried the ...

For the first time, the Myanmar Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (MEITI) has opened the books to share information with the public on revenue Myanmar’s government collects from harvesting timber. Last month, the MEITI released two reports juxtaposing statistics on production and tax payments from government ministries’ ledgers ...