The News Lens

Authoritarianism in Laos is at the root of illegal land grabs, land grievances, and ongoing human rights violations. The upcoming elections in Laos are unlikely to change this. International business stakeholders, however, can do more to support local communities and uphold fundamental human rights. The Lao ...

Feed-in tariffs (FITs) are innocuous yet powerful financial tools that enable countries to rapidly build solar or other renewables when supply chains have not had time to develop. While it is true that globally the cost of solar and wind continues to decline, large discrepancies ...

Southeast Asia is a global biodiversity hotspot, and Indonesia and Malaysia are no exception, harboring some of the highest levels of species diversity in the world. Yet those two countries also supply more than 80 percent of the world’s palm oil, and it’s widely acknowledged ...

For the group of Tibetan youngsters, it was a rare opportunity to see what life is like on the lower reaches of the river known as the Lancang in China and the Mekong elsewhere. Hailing from Qinghai Province, near the source of the Lancang, the ...

China’s international rivers are becoming a focal point for contests over control of natural resources—and potentially international conflict.China, in its powerful position as headwater nation, continues to actively promote hydropower development domestically and internationally. When downstream nations rely on un-dammed rivers for fisheries and irrigation, ...