News
It’s time for development banks to start listening
The aid community often ignores the wishes of the very people it’s supposed to be helping. The world needs a more bottom-up approach to development. Almost a year ago, the United Nations set the Sustainable Development Goals, an ambitious blueprint for governments and financiers to ...
Myitsone and the failure of China’s ‘anti-ethno-politics’ approach
Northern Myanmar’s Myitsone mega-project failed because its Chinese proponents systematically dismissed Kachin and Burmese nationalism. The Chinese hydropower developers’ strategy was what I call “anti-ethno-politics”: when the state, NGOs, businesses, or other actors try to depoliticise sensitive questions about how their own activities clash with ...
SBV urges banks to support Mekong
Banks and credit institutions need to support the socio-economic development of the Mekong Delta provinces, State Bank of Việt Nam Deputy Governor Đào Minh Tú has said. Speaking at a conference in Hậu Giang Province on 19 July to discuss developmental credit activities in the region, ...
Vietnam warned it may yield to Myanmar in exporting rice
Myanmar has jumped into large markets, getting ready to become the No 1 in the world in rice exports, according to Vo Tong Xuan, the leading rice expert. According to Xuan, Myanmar has great advantages in growing rice. Its land area is three times larger than ...
Govt publishes data on populations of religious groups
According to the figures publicly launched by the Ministry of Labor, Immigration and Population, on 21 July in the capital Naypyidaw, Buddhists constitute 87.9 percent of the country, Christians make up 6.2 percent, Muslims comprise 4.3 percent, animists are counted at 0.8 percent and Hindus are ...
IACD boosts education and cultural exchange project
The Institute of Asian Culture and Development and the Ministry of Education and Sports will work together to improve education and cultural exchange in Laos after reaching a grant project agreement. The agreement was signed on 19 July in Vientiane by IACD Country Director Dr Hosik ...
Scientists using DNA to track Mekong’s ‘monsters’
The technique which involves filtering DNA in shed skin from river water was put to the test at six deep Mekong River sites, including two in Cambodia, in the study Trails of river monsters: Detecting critically endangered Mekong giant catfish, published in this month’s Global and ...
Flood of doubts: sceptical public questions Three Gorges Dam’s capacity to stop disasters
Project was touted as a tool to prevent floods but those claims have been watered down and new threats are eroding confidence – and riverbanks. The floods have wreaked havoc in the east, leaving 237 people dead and another 93 missing. That is on top of ...
The business of achieving the sustainable development goals
By 2030, poverty and hunger should be history, every human being should have access to clean energy, and the impacts of climate change should be reduced. These are just three of the 17 promises the global community made last September when it adopted the Sustainable Development ...
Maid in Singapore
The dream of opening a business back in Myanmar is what brought Moe Moe to Singapore two years ago. What she did not know is that it would be nine months before she received her first salary. For the first nine months everything went to the ...
