Environment and land

Vietnam has banned the import of wildlife and wildlife products to reduce the risk of new pandemics. The move also bans wildlife markets for such items, including online sales. Vietnam has previously been accused of turning a blind eye to the sale of products such as pangolin ...

More than one million people in Phnom Penh face the risk of increased flooding and loss of livelihoods as wetlands in the Cambodian capital are destroyed to build apartments and industries, human rights groups warned on Monday. Developments – including the ING City township – will ...

The Mekong is once again at historical lows. The Mekong River Commission (MRC) gauge at Phnom Penh Port shows river level to be four metres below average for this time of year – and lower than last year’s record. This gauge is measuring river level on ...

A locust swarm from China has been destroying bamboo forests and corn fields in Dien Bien Province in northern Vietnam since last week. The yellow-spined bamboo locust (Ceracris kiangsu) swarm, which has an estimated 100-400 individuals per square meter, devoured bamboo leaves in 20 ha of ...

The Thai Rice Exporters Association cut its projection for 2020 rice exports from 7.5 million tonnes to 6.5 million tonnes, the lowest in a decade. Thailand shipped 3.14 million tonnes of rice in the first six months of this year, down 32.7% from the same period ...

The Mekong River has become a new front in U.S.-China rivalry, environmentalists and officials say, with Beijing overtaking Washington in both spending and influence over downstream countries at the mercy of its control of the river’s waters. It’s a confrontation in which the Trump administration – ...

Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc today issued a new directive with urgent and powerful measures to restrict wildlife trade and consumption, and reduce further pandemic risk.   With immediate effect, the directive (29/CT-TTg) bans imports of live wild animals and wildlife products, strictly eliminates any wildlife ...

A Michigan State University interdisciplinary team of faculty and staff is working to foster environmental justice in Southeast Asia. The Henry Luce Foundation’s Initiative on Southeast Asia, or LuceSEA, is providing $1 million in funding to help create the Mekong Culture WELL project. The Lower Mekong ...

Forest fires are a major source of transboundary haze in the ASEAN region. It is particularly pronounced in the dry season during the first half of the year for the Mekong subregion and second half of the year, most notably from July to September, for the southern ASEAN region.  The ASEAN region contains over half of the world’s peatland, a valuable ecosystem critical for ...

The forests are rapidly dwindling. But the people living in forest areas need to live off the land. Supporting them to practise sustainable or green farming saves both the forests and the locals’ livelihoods. Why then is this win-win solution only applied to some local ...