Modern Diplomacy

With a lifetime dedicated to forest conservation, Dr. Apichart Pattaratuma reflected back on his career and what forest management means to Thailand. In the year 1978, he received the prestigious United Nations and Ananda Mahidol Foundation Scholarship to attain higher education at the College of ...

To mark the International Day of Clean Air for blue skies, the World Bank is publishing a Country Environmental Analysis for the Lao PDR, analyzing how the country can use its commitment to greener growth to stimulate economic recovery from the current slowdown, and to improve ...

The World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors today approved a US$57 million project to help Lao PDR promote sustainable forest management, improve protected area management, and enhance livelihoods opportunities in eight provinces across the country. Project funding comes from the World Bank’s International Development Association, ...

Viet Nam’s leading environmental policy-makers, experts, business leaders, local and international organizations today endorsed an action platform, which aims to help Viet Nam dramatically reduce the flow of plastic waste into land and ocean, develop a roadmap to eliminate single-use plastic, non-biodegradable plastic bags, especially ...

Thailand signed a US$5 million grant agreement with the World Bank today in support of reducing the import and use of ozone-depleting chemicals by 2023 by more than 60 percent, as part of the country’s obligations under the Montreal Protocol. Thailand is one of the world’s ...

A project to improve access to, and quality of, basic education nationwide in Myanmar was approved today by the World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors. The project, financed by a US$100 million credit from the International Development Association (IDA), will be implemented over four school ...

For the first time, the Myanmar Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (MEITI) has opened the books to share information with the public on revenue Myanmar’s government collects from harvesting timber. Last month, the MEITI released two reports juxtaposing statistics on production and tax payments from government ministries’ ledgers ...

Senior agriculture officials from the six member countries of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) agreed to increase regional cooperation in food safety, boost the trading of climate-friendly agriculture products, and accelerate the implementation of the five-year GMS Strategy and Siem Reap Action Plan endorsed by ...

Thailand can strengthen its migration policies and systems to support sustained, innovation-driven growth, under its Thailand 4.0 strategy, experts concluded at a presentation of the recent World Bank report, Migrating to Opportunity: Overcoming Barriers to Labor Mobility in Southeast Asia today in Bangkok. Keep reading ...

Asian Development Bank (ADB) President Takehiko Nakao addressed the China Development Forum (CDF), which opened today in Beijing. []Mr. Nakao highlighted three policy challenges for the PRC as it transitions to high-quality growth in a new era: (i) inclusiveness, (ii) climate change and the environment, and ...