Environment and natural resources

The warm welcome afforded Myanmar’s de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, here on November 2 underscores Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s eagerness to counter Chinese overtures to a country, like the Philippines, of great geopolitical importance in Southeast Asia. Abe greeted Suu Kyi at the ...

Scanning the regional landscape on November 3, South-east Asian states ought to be quite optimistic about the state of ASEAN-China relations just as the year closes on the 25th anniversary of the establishment of their dialogue partnership. ASEAN and China have agreed to a series of ...

Some 800 meters above sea level and more than 100km from the nearest ocean, thousands of red sea bream thrive in the mountains of central Japan. Despite being far from their usual habitat, the fish are growing at a healthy rate in their large round ...

The Australian Centre for International Agriculture Research is ready to continue assisting people’s tree plantings in northern Luang Prabang province and will also extend support to the wood processing sector in Laos. The extension in support comes after the ACIAR project achieved success in the ...

Four days after the Paris Agreement goes into force, the United States will hold its presidential election. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has said in the past that he would “cancel the Paris climate agreement,” prompting a reporter to ask China’s special representative for climate ...

Civil society groups are getting closer to unveiling a new set of guidelines that will change how the impact of big development projects is assessed across the Mekong region, NGOs said on November 1, following the end of a two-month public consultation period. Activists, however, ...

Laos and China have reaffirmed their commitment to further strengthen cooperation in the maintenance of security along their shared border with the signing of a new agreement. The agreement was signed by the Head of the National Boundary Committee Office of the Ministry of Foreign ...

Three Mandalay Region development projects approved under the previous government are being reconsidered under the National League for Democracy administration. The projects are temporarily stalled while experts study potential negative impacts on the local environment and the public, officials have noted. Organising committees have been formed ...

The HCM City Fine Arts and Woodworking Association predicted that Vietnam may reach $7.6 billion from timber and wooden exports in 2016, an increase of 10 percent compared to 2015. Meanwhile, experts have repeatedly warned of the danger of falling behind other regional countries. Vietnam urged to ...

The inclusion of the UN’s Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation program, known as REDD+, as a standalone article in the Paris Climate Agreement was widely hailed as an encouraging political signal that protecting forests and other valuable carbon sinks would henceforth be a ...