Environment and natural resources

The Forest Department wants to upgrade an island in Ayeyarwady Region that is a nesting site for sea turtles from its current status as a protected area to a Ramsar Site. A Ramsar Site is a wetland site designated to be of international importance under the ...

Industries that produce pollution may have to pay more taxes now that the Lao government has embraced the National Green Growth Strategy. Under the strategy, which Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith endorsed on Jan 30, the Ministry of Finance will impose taxes to discourage industries from producing ...

Just over a year ago, I reported on the uncertain future of the Khon Pi rapids, located near the Thai town of Chiang Khong and lying in the riverbed between Thailand and Laos. At issue was the desire of a Chinese company to blast the rapids and ...

Laos government officials completed a three-week training course on advanced Geographic Information Systems, which was implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to enable them to undertake climate mapping and zoning. The training course, funded by the Global Environment Facility, covered spatial analysis, geo-databases, network ...

Governments across Southeast Asia have vowed to strengthen cooperation in curbing the illegal wildlife trade, suspected to have sparked the novel coronavirus epidemic. The issue will be at the top of the agenda at the Biodiversity Conference in Kuala Lumpur later this month. “What needs to ...

NGO Forum on Cambodia issued a report on Wednesday which said that from 2000 to 2017, some one million houses were seriously affected by climate change disasters. Yet, government spending on the issue remained relatively limited. The report is said to be the first in Cambodia ...

We didn’t expect a junkyard in the jungle, but that’s what we found: chainsaws – hundreds of them – piled high, along with old trucks, dozens of battered cars, countless motorbikes and scores of giant, illegally-harvested timbers.  It had all been confiscated by rangers working ...

Mangroves account for only 0.7 per cent of the Earth’s tropical forest area, but they are among the world’s most productive and important ecosystems. They provide a wealth of ecological and socio-economic benefits, such as serving as nursery habitat for fish species, offering protection against ...

Researchers plan to assess plastic waste leakage into the Mekong River system as part of efforts to protect the mighty river. Government officials and researchers from the four Mekong countries will join forces to assess plastic waste leakage into the Mekong River system. This will be done ...

Vietnam’s Mekong Delta will suffer salt intrusion at levels that would beat the 2016 record this month, meteorologists have warned. In the period of March 11-15, salinity will rise to eventually trump the levels of mid-February and the same period in 2016, according to the hydrological ...