News
HCM City to relocate 26,000 households living on canals
Relocating 26,000 households and clearing the slums along canals is one of the seven key projects of the HCM City gentrification program. A research work by Dr Le Huy Ba and architect Le Minh Thanh found that nearly 100 percent of rivers and canals in HCMC ...
Peninsula’s future in flux
Chea Sophat stood on the gravel embankment of a road as he pointed to what was once his rice field, an unfenced, 4,000-square-metre waterlogged plot with a handful of buffaloes wallowing in the mud. Across the Tonle Sap river, Phnom Penh was celebrating the festivities ...
Changing Mekong currents compound dam anxieties in Southeast Asia
Several factors are disrupting the terrain for investment in large hydropower dams, and governments should take note. The government of Laos officially submitted the Pak Beng Dam to the Mekong River Commission in mid-November and has begun preparatory work around the future dam site. While ...
New Laos dam draws criticism
News that Laos will move ahead with the proposed 912-megawatt Pak Beng dam, which would be the third mainstream dam in Laos’ Lower Mekong River, has sparked criticism from environmental groups who say downstream countries should decide the fate of potentially harmful development projects. Laos ...
Yangon govt to offer low-cost housing to ‘real’ squatters
The Yangon Region government is in the process of arranging low-cost housing for “real squatters” in the commercial capital, Yangon’s security and border affairs minister told the regional legislature on November 16. He was responding to a question from lawmaker U Kyaw Zeya (NLD; Dagon ...
Govt, int'l organisations discuss SDG strategies
The government and international organisations with a presence in Laos have held a pre-consultation on the Sustainable Development Goals in preparation for the 2016 Round Table Implementation Meeting to be held from November 24-25 in Vientiane province. The 2016 Round Table Implementation Meeting SDG Pre-consultation took ...
UNESCO, government to train Bagan masons
The masons tasked with rebuilding hundreds of crumbling pagodas in Bagan will receive training from the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and the Bagan Department of Archaeology, National Museum and Library later this month, department director U Aung Aung Kyaw told The Myanmar Times.`A 6.8-magnitude earthquake near ...
Minister slams UN rep over alleged ‘prejudice’
Foreign Minister Prak Sokhon slammed UN Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights country representative Wan-Hea Lee for alleged “prejudice” in a two-page missive released on November 4. The letter was sent to UN Development Project resident representative Claire Van der Vaeren, blasting Wan-Hea ...
No back-up plan for Karenni refugees in Thai border camp as funds dry up
As the first wave of Myanmar refugees is repatriated from Thai border camps this week, returning to a home some have not seen for decades, others in the camps fear they will soon have no choice but to follow suit. Since the National League for Democracy ...
Locals want a disruptive dam project in Northern Myanmar terminated once and for all
It has now been five years since the Myitsone Dam project in Northern Myanmar was suspended, but a local ethnic Kachin man, Mung Ra, is still not satisfied. He wishes that the project had been entirely terminated. He frequently laments the loss of his farm and ...
