News

Preventing the further destruction of Southeast Asia’s forests will be a critical step to stopping the spread of future deadly viruses similar to COVID-19, according to leading experts studying the risk factors that have contributed to the current global pandemic. Over the past four decades, swathes of ...

What happens when the greatest threat to national security comes from a virus? What does that mean for defense spending, modernization, and civil-military relations? In Southeast Asia — where militaries have long had an outsized role in politics, economics, and society — the answers to ...

As cities and countries impose lockdowns, people around the world, from the UK to India, are struggling to access food. The causes vary, with some communities facing lost income and local scarcity while others deal with barriers to movement, but the drivers of this food insecurity are primarily ...

Incomplete and prospective hydropower dam projects in Southeast Asia, particularly along the Mekong River and its tributaries, are at risk of major delays and shutdowns as the COVID-19 pandemic impacts major industries, energy markets and worker safety. The government of Laos has already ordered a temporary ...

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 ...

Ho Chi Minh City is constantly flooded, while Bangkok continues to sink below sea level. It sounds like a science fiction movie set in Southeast Asia. But it’s what experts predict will happen within the next two to three decades in the major Vietnamese and Thai ...

Over the previous 12 months, rising environmental threats in Asia have had a lot to do with water—most significantly rising seas pushed by international warming. Southeast Asia is proving to be notably weak. New research present that local weather change and rising sea ranges will threaten the ...

The world has long associated plummeting populations of Southeast Asian wildlife with news of forest degradation and poignant images of deforested lands. Recent studies, however, bring to light another human practice that’s been driving the decline of wildlife numbers in these ecosystems. Researchers from the Leibniz ...

The animal is dead. It can be a fish, bird, mammal or reptile. An autopsy is conducted and inevitably reams of plastic are discovered in its stomach. When I wake up every morning, I step into my bathroom and survey the shelves. There are rows of ...

The swirling currents of the once mighty Mekong, shrunk by drought and increasingly crippled by dams point towards an unprecedented crisis of water governance along the more than 4,900 kilometers of southeast Asia’s longest river. “This is the worst ecological disaster in history of the Mekong,” declared ...