News
Myanmar: New Project Aims to Improve Education Quality and Access Across Country
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 ...
Vietnam’s Mekong Delta Declares Emergency on Devastating Drought
Vietnam’s prolonged drought, coupled with an extensive buildup of salinity, have driven five provinces in the country’s rice bowl to declare a state of emergency. “This year’s drought and salinity have been way more devastating than what we saw four years ago,” said Nguyen Thien Phap, ...
Mai Ngoc Chau
Idle Factories, Empty Trade Zone Highlight Coronavirus Impact on Southeast Asia
A Chinese special economic zone in Laos has fallen silent, workers in Cambodia staged a strike after their factory closed for lack of inputs from China, and Myanmar grappled with plant closures and layoffs, as the economic fallout from the coronavirus cascaded across the region. In ...
Laos has no coronavirus, deputy minister assures foreign diplomats
Laos is still free from the coronavirus even though the deadly Covid-19 has now spread to some 79 countries, Deputy Minister of Health, Associate Prof. Dr Phouthone Muongpak, told foreign diplomats yesterday. The ministry, in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, held a meeting to ...
Souksakhone Vaenkeo
FAO help train Laos officials on climate mapping, zoning
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 ...
Coronavirus outbreak may spur Southeast Asian action on wildlife trafficking
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 ...
Imelda Abano
PM issues slew of urgent measures to deal with Covid-19 situation
Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha issued 14 urgent measures today (March 3) to handle the Covid-19 situation, government spokesperson Narumon Pinyosinwat said. They are: 1. State agencies must strictly enforce the Public Health Ministry’s measures and guidelines on the outbreak and, if need be, can also issue ...
NGO calls for climate budget transparency
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 ...
Khorn Savi
Hydropower projects on Mekong River should not cause negative impacts: spokeswoman
The building of hydropower projects on the Mekong River’s mainstream must ensure that they do not cause negative impacts, including cross-border effects, on the environment and socio-economic development of the countries along the river, especially the nations in the downstream region, in line with international practice and regulations ...
Cambodia: Building a Nested System to Protect Remaining Forests
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 ...
Quentin Renard, Sovanna Nhem, Chivin Leng, Jeff Silverman, and Donna Lee