Environment and natural resources
Dams threaten traditional way of life in Mekong Basin
Sak Siam, 69, chief of Chnok Tru, a village in central Cambodia, is worried. The floating village of about 1,700 households is located on a tributary of the Mekong River. “The villagers will be unable to survive if the fish catch decreases further,” he said. Hydroelectric ...
Seminar seeks to address land subsidence in Mekong Delta
A scientific seminar on land subsidence in the Mekong Delta – situation and solutions took place in Hanoi on December 28. In his opening speech, Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Vo Tuan Nhan said climate change, riverside landslide and land subsidence are posing challenges ...
Protected Forest in Cambodian Commune Illegally Logged Through Official Collusion: Mother Nature
Around 1,200 hectares (2,965 acres) of protected forest from a commune in Cambodia’s Ratanakkiri province has been illegally logged for timber and sold to businessmen from neighboring Vietnam through collusion with Cambodian authorities, an environmental watchdog group said Wednesday. An investigator with the Cambodian nongovernmental organization ...
Best of 2018: Disaster after disaster on the Mekong
From sea to source, the Mekong River stretches nearly 5,000 km through six countries. More than 60 million people depend on its waters for survival, and it is second only to the Amazon in its biodiversity. Photographers Gareth Bright and Luke Forsyth spent eighteen months travelling ...
The last 92 Irrawaddy dolphins in Mekong River may not survive
Experts are concerned that the Mekong dolphin is unlikely to survive Cambodia’s modernisation as a new dam is planned. It says, “building dams destroy habitats” and lists threats to dolphins, including pollutions and gillnets. It looks like an insect-eaten papyrus. The Irrawaddy dolphin is a critically endangered ...
Nathan A. Thompson
SPECIAL REPORT: Blood-hued Phayung almost gone as corrupt officials pave way for logging
BY KAENG E-KHIEW Waterfall in northeastern Buntrik-Yod Mon Wildlife Sanctuary a mature male elephant lay dead, with traces of a highly volatile bullet left in its mouth and its bud. Another AK47 bullet was found buried in its ribs. A check of camera traps installed one ...
PIYAPORN WONGRUANG
157 ’new' Mekong species discovered
A bat that could be a member of an American boy band, a gibbon with a Star Wars name and a toad straight from Tolkien’s Middle Earth are among the 157 newly discovered species in the Greater Mekong region described by the world’s scientists in ...
Researchers seek alternatives to Mekong River hydropower dam
The Mekong River, flowing from the Tibetan Plateau through Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam to the South China Sea, is a hotbed of ecological diversity. The roughly 60 million people who live in the region, many in poverty, depend on the river and its ...
Options to mitigate the impacts of the Lower Mekong Basin river damming to fisheries
Newly constructed dams threaten the delicate ecosystem of the Lower Mekong Basin. The solutions are available but as is so often the case, politics stands in the way. Keep reading ...
GMS biodiversity conservation corridors to operate from 2019
The Greater Mekong Subregion biodiversity conservation corridors and project management plans will be put into operation from 2019, said Vice Director of the Vietnam National Administration of Environment Nguyen The Dong. Dong, who is also the director of the project’s management board, said that the ...
