Environment and natural resources
Opinion: Did China close Mekong tap? Data matters for cooperation
Recent reports claim definitive proof that the 2019-20 Mekong drought was caused by China – researchers at the Australia Mekong Partnership for Environmental Resources and Energy Systems (AMPERES) disagree. Will the controversial analysis further polarise stakeholders, or could the crisis shift regional cooperation into more productive spaces? The ...
Tarek Ketelsen; Timo Räsänen; John Sawdon
From drink bottles to tobacco sachets, UN study traces plastic pollution hot spots in the Mekong and Ganges
Municipal trash dumped at an open landfill in Thailand risks filling a nearby tributary of the Mekong river with plastic waste whenever it is rainy or windy. Along India’s Ganges river, small sachets that used to wrap chewing tobacco are abundant, but are difficult to collect ...
Tan Hui Yee
Dams on the Mekong are causing mayhem
The Mighty Mekong is one of the world’s most iconic rivers, but it is at grave risk of turning into a shadow of its former self. “Everywhere you look there are indications that this river, which has provided for so many, for so long, is at ...
Threats against Cambodian Forest Defenders Escalate Amid COVID-19
It takes particularly cynical government officials to use the world’s focus on tackling COVID-19 to accelerate illegal logging of protected forests; simultaneously lining the pockets of business elites, attacking environmental activists, and sabotaging its own ability to fight the climate emergency. Yet this is exactly ...
Community Forests to be upgraded for food security in the Deep South
The Southern Border Provinces Administrative Center (SBPAC) is joining hands with the Royal Forest Department and other relevant agencies in rehabilitating and upgrading community forests in the Deep South in order to generate employment and income for local residents. SBPAC Secretary-General Rear Admiral Somkiat Pholprayoon said ...
Rebutting US Claims, China Says Dams Unrelated to Thai Drought
The Chinese Embassy in Bangkok on Monday dismissed a US-funded study accusing China’s dams of hoarding water in the vital Mekong River. In a statement released to Khaosod English, the embassy said the extreme drought felt by Mekong’s downstream countries in 2019 were caused by exceptionally ...
Khaosod English
Over 5,000 tonnes of illegal timber seized in Sagaing Region
With the illegal timber extraction rampant during coronavirus pandemic period in Sagaing Region, authorities are exerting greatest efforts and thus over 5,000 tonnes of illegal timbers were seized from October to April in this fiscal year 2019-2020, according to the Sagaing Region Forest Department. During the ...
Aye Maung (Translated by Hay Mar)
Ecosystem off Chàm Islands recovers after COVID-19
Less tourism activities and waste around the Chàm Islands – a world biodiversity reserve site – would help the marine ecosystem in waters off the islands recover after the two-month social distancing order due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Experts and staff from the Chàm Island Maritime Protected Area (MPA) have made ...
WWF expresses sorrow over loss of globally endangered wildlife
The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) shared its sadness over the loss of two adult female Banteng in Northeastern part of Cambodia, according to its statement released recently. The two Banteng are believed to have been shot dead a few days inside Phnom Prich Wildlife ...
US Study Insists China's Dams to Blame for Mekong Drought
China’s massive dams on the Mekong River exacerbated last year’s extreme drought in downstream countries including Thailand, researchers from a US government-funded study said on Wednesday. The researchers discuss the findings – originally published by American research company Eyes on Earth Inc. – in a video conference organized ...
Khaosod English
