Environment and natural resources
Creeping deforestation is threatening alpine environments across Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia was once largely covered in dense rainforests, but intense forest clearing over the past decades has denuded much of the tropical region of its forest cover. On the island of Borneo, for instance, 5.9 million hectares of trees were lost between 2004 and 2017 to logging, ...
Daniel T Cross
Fortress conservation in Wildlife Alliance’s Southern Cardamon REDD+ Project: evictions, violence, and burning people’s homes. “We’re proud of our work. The forest, the wildlife, you come to feel they’re yours.”
“Our project has been successful because we have developed and implemented an approach to defending the forest that meets the threat level with a truly effective response,” Suwanna Gauntlett, chief executive of Wildlife Alliance, recently told Gerald Flynn, a freelance journalist working in Cambodia. Gauntlett was talking about ...
Chris Lang
COVID or not, ‘the desire to eat wildlife’ continues in Asia
Continuing attempts to curb the sale of wild animals and their meat have failed to engender change at wet markets in the Asia Pacific, even as the region struggles to contain the largest and deadliest wave of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic. According to ...
Ian Lloyd Neubauer
Mekong Delta farmers restructuring crop cultivation to better respond to climate change
Farmers in the Mekong Delta provinces changed time and crops for cultivation to adapt to the negative impacts of climate changes. Some moved farms back into hinterlands to easily take fresh water from upstreams. Others shifted to grow fruits that generate higher economic efficiency. With freshwater available ...
Authors: Huu Duc - Minh Dam. Translated by Hien Anh.
Why we should care about fate of the Mekong
The Mekong River is Southeast Asia’s beating heart, coursing almost 5,000 km through China, where it is known as the Lancang River, and onward through Myanmar, Laos, Thailand and Cambodia before entering Vietnam and flowing into the sea. More than 70 million people rely on the ...
An Pich Hatda
Endangered Species Are Paying the Price of COVID-19
The table we’re writing on is made of rosewood, the most trafficked wildlife product in the world. For months, we’ve been researching the uptick in logging and poaching, which are gradually emptying out the forests here in Cambodia as well as neighboring Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, ...
Lindsey Kennedy, Nathan Paul Southern
Close to 108,260 ha of new forest planted during year’s first half
A total of 108,258 ha of forest were planted in the first six months, up 22 percent on-year. According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, during the period, the entire nations prepared nearly 650 million saplings for afforestation, an annual increase of 43 percent. To ...
VNA
New Unesco heritage bid for forest site
Thailand will push ahead with another attempt to secure Unesco World Heritage site status for the Kaeng Krachan Forest Complex at the annual World Heritage Convention this month, said Varawut Silpa-archa, Minister of Natural Resources and Environment. The country’s largest national park, covering a 2.9-million rai ...
POST REPORTERS
Carving up the Cardamoms: Conservationists fear massive land grab in Cambodia
A new regulation signed into law in March this year but only unveiled publicly in May will see almost 127,000 hectares (313,800 acres) of previously protected land in Cambodia made available for sale or rent, prompting fears among conservationists about a land grab for some ...
GERALD FLYNN & ANDREW BALL & PHOUNG VANTHA
Low dry season flows in Mekong drive down Cambodia’s Tonle Sap, countries urged to improve basin-wide management
The Mekong River Commission (MRC) Secretariat has urged the wider exchange of data and information as part of recommendations to improve water resource management in the Lower Mekong Basin, in a bulletin released today. The 18-page Situation Report encourages MRC Member Countries and Dialogue Partners to share ...
