Environment and natural resources

Environment and natural resources policy and administration

Laos to proceed with seventh Mekong dam despite impact concerns

Pressing ahead with its vision to become the “Battery of Southeast Asia,” the government of Laos is going forward with plans to build its seventh of nine mainstream dams on the Mekong River, despite widespread concerns that it could inflict social and environmental damage. The 728-megawatt ...

Translated by Sidney Khotpanya. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.

Dead sea turtle in Thailand shines spotlight on environmental impact of Loy Krathong festival

Last month, a dead sea turtle was washed ashore in Chonburi. It was identified as a female endangered green sea turtle aged about 20. An examination by the Sea Turtle Conservation Centre in the Thai coastal province later showed its intestines were full of nylon string ...

Pichayada Promchertchoo

Cambodian plan to allow hunting in protected areas worries conservationists

Hunting in Cambodia’s protected areas and forests would be legal in some cases under a proposal from the country’s Ministry of Environment that conservation groups fear could lead to abuses that threaten wildlife populations, according to drafts of rule changes seen by RFA.  The ministry is ...

Jack Adamović Davies

Vietnam’s minorities lose right to farm forests

One afternoon at the end of 2017, officials in Dakrong district in Central Vietnam’s Quang Tri province visited Ho Thi Nieng’s house. They claimed she and her husband had “burned the protected forest to do farming.” “We had been cultivating that land for a long time ...

Nguyen Dac Thanh

Cambodia Microfinance Should be Taxed to Address Climate Change Impact, Research Says

New research from Cambodia challenges the microfinance industry’s assertions that its loans help farmers to resist the impacts of climate change. In fact, the research argues, microfinance undermines the capacity of farmers to respond to unstable climate conditions. The profit from Cambodia generated by foreign-owned microfinance ...

David Whitehouse

Gridlocked and flood-prone, Vietnam’s biggest city struggles to keep pace with its own breakneck growth

As soon as the roads are widened a fresh glut of cars moves in to fill them, says lifelong Ho Chi Minh City resident Thinh Pham, who fears urban planning is forever condemned to lag behind the unrelenting growth of one of Southeast Asia’s most ...

Michael Tatarski

Vietnam asks World Meteorological Organization to remove 'nine-dash line'

Vietnam has asked the World Meteorological Organization to respect its sovereignty in the East Sea by removing China’s infamous “nine-dash line.” The Foreign Affairs Ministry spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang said at a press meet Thursday that “Vietnam has repeatedly dismissed the so-called nine-dash line as ...

Vu Anh

New climate policy fails to sway critics

The government is setting out major bureaucratic changes with the introduction of the Climate Change Act and the founding of the Department of Climate Change, which will be the new legal tool and central agency to oversee the country’s climate actions. Speaking at the Thailand Climate ...

PRATCH RUJIVANAROM

Explainer: What is ecocide?

What is ecocide? In short, ecocide refers to the mass destruction of ecosystems. Formally, it is defined as “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts”. ...

Kate Yeo

Hundreds of environmental and customary land activists were killed, why is being a 'very dangerous' activist?

The killing of a prominent indigenous expert and a British journalist in Brazil is yet another safety issue for environmental and land activists around the world. Bruno Pereira, former head of Brazil’s indigenous organization Funai, and British journalist Dom Phillips were previously declared missing while reporting ...

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