Environment and natural resources

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 ...

More than 200 indigenous people in Mondulkiri province’s Keo Seima district protested on Tuesday for access to farmland inside a wildlife sanctuary, which the Environment Ministry banned them from last month, citing conservation laws. Bun Nat, a representative of the protesters, said 250 ethnic minority Bunong ...

Kyar Kone Te Tike is a small town in Magwe division in central Myanmar, about 19 miles away from the Magwe Natmauk Road. Daw Mar Oo has lived here all of her life. Come summertime, finding drinking water is always a struggle. There are three small hand-dug ...

Preventing the further destruction of Southeast Asia’s forests will be a critical step to stopping the spread of future deadly viruses similar to COVID-19, according to leading experts studying the risk factors that have contributed to the current global pandemic. Over the past four decades, swathes of ...

A recently published report by Eyes on Earth, Inc. has pointed the finger at Chinese dams holding back water as having significantly contributed to the major drought impacting the Mekong River in Southeast Asia. The drought’s effects have been felt by millions and hamper efforts to ...

The Wildlife Alliance yesterday discovered over 200 hectares of mangrove forests within Koh Kong province’s Peam Krasaop Wildlife Sanctuary were illegally cleared. In a press release obtained yesterday, the wildlife and forest conservation NGO said the discovery of the forestry crime was made following a routine ...

WWF-Cambodia says researchers had a close encounter with a herd of wild Asian elephants in Srepok Wildlife Sanctuary in Mondulkiri province which is a positive sign conservation efforts are working. A WWF-Cambodia statement on Friday said its researchers encountered the herd in mid-April, while they were ...

The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), in partnership with the Government of Japan, today launched a new project which aims to reduce the environmental impact of cities in South East Asia by addressing plastic waste pollution in rivers ...