Environment and natural resources

Modern China seems to have learned the ancient master’s lesson well. It has unleashed water wars on Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand. Even as China’s neighbors deal with COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, they are experiencing their worst drought in living memory. The mighty Mekong ...

River flow downhill, which in much of Asia means they start on the Tibetan plateau before cascading away to the east, west and south. Those steep descents provide the ideal setting for hydropower projects. And since Tibet is part of China, Chinese engineers have been ...

Environmentalists have urged Laos not to proceed with the construction of another “destructive” dam on the Mekong River, a vital Southeast Asian waterway that sustains about 60 million people. Last week, Laos’ communist government announced plans for the Sanakham dam – close to the northeastern border ...

Clear-cutting forests may provide short-term monetary gains, but the true costs of mass deforestation could be steep.  The novel coronavirus that has caused the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic is believed to be zoonotic, meaning it first spread from animals to humans. Not only is that a common ...

Hydropower projects must not affect people’s lives in riparian countries negatively, Vietnam’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said Thursday. Le Thi Thu Hang was responding to a query about Laos’s plan to build another dam on the Mekong River at an online press meet. “The development of hydropower projects ...

ish writhe frantically in the shallow pool, as their schoolmates stranded on the exposed sandbar breathe their last. It is November, the end of the monsoon season, yet the water in the Mekong river is perilously low. On this stretch, in north-eastern Thailand, the bank is ...

Birds are a valuable part of our ecosystems. They forage for insects and fish, pollinate flowers and fertilise the soil. Some need protecting from extinction, when their habitats change or come under threat. World Migratory Bird Day (WMBD) is an international day that draws attention to ...

The European Union and the French Development Agency (AFD) have established a 20-million-euro ($21.5 million) fund to help Vietnam deal with climate change. The EU will provide the money as a non-refundable grant to the AFD to run the fund. The latter will in turn provide loans ...

Next to water, sand is our most consumed natural resource. The global demand for sand and gravel stands between 40 billion and 50 billion tonnes annually, according to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), and its scarcity is an emerging global crisis. The world may run out of sand if we ...

Fishermen in northeast Thailand say they have seen catches in the Mekong River plunge, while some farmers in Vietnam and Cambodia are leaving for jobs in cities as harvests of rice and other crops shrink. The common thread driving these events is erratic water levels in ...