Environment and natural resources

Pollution and waste

Alarm as haze plan 'lacking'

Environment experts and academics are voicing their concern over the authorities’ lack of preparation to deal with the upcoming haze season. They say the government needs to strengthen its pollution control regulations to better mitigate the problem at its source and protect the people’s health. Speaking at ...

PRATCH RUJIVANAROM

Bringing Clean Air to 4 Billion People in Asia

As the lives lost to COVID-19 edge closer to 5 million globally, policymakers have demonstrated sharply growing interest in how protecting biodiversity, mitigating climate change, and addressing other planetary crises can improve public health. One planetary crisis that benefited temporarily from COVID-19 lockdowns but requires ...

Kaoru Akahoshi and Eric Zusman

Island of rubbish: Koh Samui’s pollution problem remains unsolved

No one can argue with the appeal of visiting Thailand’s exotic, tropical islands. With their glistening palm trees, crystal-clear waters, and powdery, white sands, a trip down south is what many yearn to cross off their bucket lists. One of Thailand’s most iconic islands is that ...

The Thaiger

Air pollution cuts Hanoian lifespan by 2.5 years: study

Life expectancy among Hanoians is reduced by 2.49 years on average due to exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5), a recent study indicates. “Research on the impact of air pollution caused by PM2.5 dust on public health in Hanoi in 2019” by the Hanoi-based non-profit organization ...

Minh Nga

Crumbling under mountains of waste

Infectious waste is starting to pile up across the country as the Covid-19 pandemic continues — most notably in Bangkok and Nonthaburi, where the amount of waste is quickly exceeding the capacity of local incinerators. Nevertheless, the Department of Health assured that it has a plan ...

PRATCH RUJIVANAROM

Plastic waste imports are 'unwanted'

More than 100 environmental groups have called on the government to prohibit the import of plastic waste and instead encourage the use of domestic plastic waste for recycling as a way to safeguard the environment and promote the circular economy. The network of 107 civil society ...

POST REPORTERS

Fishermen call for river pollution to be addressed

Members of a large fishing community in Naxab village, Naxaithong district, Vientiane, are appealing to authorities to address the problem of farms dumping animal waste in the Khon River, which they say is creating a threat to fishing. The polluted river affects some 1,648 people who ...

Times Reporters

Vietnam to need 80,000 tonnes of biodegradable plastics annually by 2025

The demand for biodegradable plastics in Vietnam is projected to reach 80,000 tonnes annually by 2025, according to Associate Prof. Dr. Le Hung Anh, Director of the Institute of Environmental Science, Engineering and Management. At a recent workshop on biodegradable plastic production and consumption held by the Ministry of Natural ...

VNA

Plastic gets to the oceans through over 1,000 rivers

The problem with plastic waste just got more complicated—and so did the effort to stanch its flow into the world’s oceans. Rivers are the primary conduits for plastic waste to the seas. In 2017, two separate groups of scientists concluded that 90 percent of river-borne plastic ...

LAURA PARKER

Google helps tackle plastic pollution in the Mekong River, aided by machine learning

The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) has partnered with Google to fight plastic pollution in the Mekong River, leveraging citizen science and machine learning to understand the magnitude of the problem impacting the longest river in Southeast Asia. Aided by technical advisory support from Google, the CounterMEASURE ...

James Henderson (Channel Asia)

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