Asia Times

Mekong River dying a slow but certain death

A confluence of drought and dams along the Mekong River has renewed concerns about the future of the 4,700-kilometer waterway, upon which tens of millions of people depend for their livelihoods in China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam. The number of dams impeding the Mekong’s flow ...

Illegal snares killing SE Asia wildlife

The animals of Southeast Asia’s tropical rainforests are under threat. As if deforestation and habitat degradation weren’t enough to contend with, cheap, easy-to-produce illegal snares are being set at an alarming rate in the last refuges for wildlife in the region, indiscriminately killing and maiming ...

Water war risk rising on the Mekong

The Mekong River, a waterway that originates in China and snakes through five Southeast Asian countries, is emerging as a new security flashpoint, similar in dynamic to escalating conflicts in the South China Sea. China has built 11 dams and has plans for another eight along ...

David Hutt

Thailand penalizes peasants, not real climate offenders

A recent decision by a Thai appellate court against 14 residents of Ban Sapwai, a village in the northeastern province of Chaiyaphum, proves again that peasant women are bearing the brunt of false climate-change solutions. Instead of committing to the goal of mitigating climate change by phasing ...

Suluck Lamubol

Stop work on Lao dam and help victims: groups

Civil society groups in three countries have called for construction to stop on a dam in southern Laos where a major collapse occurred last year, killing more than 70 people and leaving about 5,000 villagers homeless. The groups say thousands displaced by the disaster at the Xe-Pian ...

Jim Pollard

Cambodia, Thailand reconnect a Cold War-cut link

Tourists, gamblers, traders and others can now travel by train between Bangkok and the Thai-Cambodian border for the first time since tracks were cut 45 years ago at the end of the US-Vietnam War. The new rail link ends one of the last infrastructural disruptions caused ...

Richard S. Ehrlich

China winning new Cold War on the Mekong

When the state tabloid China Daily ran a paid advertisement in the New York Times extolling the virtues of Beijing’s proliferating dams in Laos, the piece sparked a new cold war controversy. Entitled “Employment on hydroelectric project in Laos delivers better lives”, the piece stated that ...

China bids to bring Yangon into a modern age

Across the river from Myanmar’s colonial-era old capital of Yangon, low-slung shanties dot rice fields that extend into a bucolic rural distance. But that could soon change if local property developers and their deep-pocketed Chinese backers build the Yangon New City Project, an ultra-modern design with ...

Study examines forest loss in Mekong region

Dramatic forest degradation and loss in the Greater Mekong region have both their causes and potential solutions rooted in forest governance, according to a recent publication by researchers from the Center for People and Forests (RECOFTC), the University of British Columbia, and WWF. (The full ...

Karen Mo

Cambodian sanctuary ravaged by logging

As you approach Beng Per Wildlife Sanctuary, five hours north of Phnom Penh, it’s difficult to tell exactly where the park begins. There is no audience of trees to greet you, no sign to welcome you. In many areas, there are no trees at all, ...

Chris Humphrey

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