Environment and natural resources

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 ...

Kieu Anh Tran heads down a small alley to her workshop in Ho Chi Minh City’s Binh Thanh District. Inside, her team is busy washing used plastic tarpaulins, cutting patterns, and sewing the discarded material into backpacks, tote bags, and wallets. In Vietnam’s southern city and ...

On November 13, as country delegates at the UN climate summit in Egypt, known as COP27, continued their negotiations, Duwa Lashi La, the acting president of the National Unity Government (NUG), Myanmar’s parallel administration, sent a letter to the meeting reaffirming its commitment to reduce climate-warming emissions. He added that ...

The author Tucker Elliot wrote in “The Rainy Season” about the volatile nature of the Mekong:  “No matter the border, the Mekong has been an indiscriminate giver and taker of life in Southeast Asia for thousands of years. It’s a paradox like civilization’s other great rivers – ...

HO CHI MINH CITY, VIETNAM – At 63, Nguyen Thi Ngoc landed her first full-time ‘company’ job as a security guard in Ho Chi Minh City. She had never been to a city before taking the job in early 2021, but the former farmer from ...

Ahead of next week’s inaugural negotiations on what will be included in the UN’s plastics treaty, WWF and Plastic Free Foundation release an Ipsos survey showing that an average of seven out of 10 people polled across 34 countries believe that the treaty should create ...

Pangolin scales at US$160 a kilogram, monkeys and wild cats for sale – the online trade in protected and rare species is thriving in Laos, a key Southeast Asian gateway to the insatiable Chinese and Vietnamese markets for animal products. As world leaders gather in Egypt ...

The confusion over Myanmar timber exports to India was laid to rest last month when the central government in New Delhi informed the Indian border state of Mizoram that timber was not on the restricted list of commodities from Myanmar. New Delhi’s directive was in response to a ...

Around 100 flood-resistant houses built in the Mekong Delta have not been used for two decades as upstream dams have disrupted the eagerly awaited flooding season. One afternoon in November, Nguyen Thi Diem, 32, and her husband took advantage of the sunny weather to fix the ...

Glaciers in UN World Heritage sites are among those likely to disappear by 2050 as a result of global warming – regardless of efforts to limit the rise in global temperatures, scientists have warned. Researchers fear their loss is likely to have a devastating impact on vital waterways ...