Environment and land
New forestry law has harsher penalties for encroachers and illegal loggers
Forest encroachers caught clearing land or burning trees, in any of Thailand’s national parks or gardens, in order to occupy the land, will soon face jail terms of up to 20 years and/or a fine of as much as two million baht under the new ...
MARD gathers ideas for timber regulations

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) is calling for ideas to create a draft decree that establishes a system of regulations ensuring Việt Nam’s legal timber and wood products qualify for import and export. The ideas are expected to come from relevant ministries and sectors, experts and ...
Businesses key to ensuring environmental protection

Businesses play an important role in ensuring environmental protection and the sustainable development of Việt Nam, experts said at a forum in HCM City on Thursday. Though pollution levels remain high in the country, many businesses still have inefficient waste processing systems or are not environmentally ...
Assessing the climate resilience and transformation potential of Mekong River Delta
The agriculture sector at the Mekong River Delta in Vietnam must transform to enhance its adaptation capacity against climate change impacts. A master plan grounded in the context of climate change in the Mekong River Delta (MRD) is required to facilitate agricultural transformation. This is applicable ...
Renz Louie Celeridad
First global look finds most rivers awash with antibiotics
EACH YEAR, HUMANS produce, prescribe, and ingest more antibiotics than they did the year before. Those drugs have done wonders for public health, saving millions from infections that might otherwise have killed them. But the drugs’ influence persists in the environment long after they’ve done their duty ...
Alejandra Borunda
Lao Authorities Allow Chinese Firm to Plant on Land Promised to Dam Collapse Survivors

A Chinese-backed firm is growing bananas on land promised by the government of Laos as compensation to survivors of a 2018 dam collapse that that has been described as the country’s worst flooding in decades, RFA’s Lao Service has learned. The disaster occurred last July, when ...
Using Geospatial Technology and Earth Observations to Monitor and Forecast Drought in Vietnam and Address Agricultural Productivity Impacts
Droughts are slow-onset disasters that trigger significant environmental impacts, including loss in agricultural productivity across the globe. The Lower Mekong region is no exception. Recently, Vietnam has been contending with droughts and resulting damages, especially in 2015 when it suffered heavy losses, especially in rice ...
Farrukh Chishtie
Rice production in Vietnam's Mekong Delta took wrong path: expert
While the entire society was still in dreaming of being a rice export power, farmers were realistic, realizing that the higher the yield of rice, the lower profit they would get because of higher fertilizer and pesticide costs. Rice farmers in the Mekong Delta now live ...
World's rivers loaded with antibiotics waste: Study
Rivers worldwide are polluted with antibiotics that exceed environmental safety thresholds by up to 300 times, according to research unveiled at a conference Monday. Scientists found one or more common antibiotics in two-thirds of 711 samples taken from rivers in 72 countries, they told a meeting ...
Marlowe Hood
Myanmar tops the list of the rare red-crowned crane population in South-East Asia
Myanmar becomes a country which can conserve the highest number of the rare red-crowned cranes in South East Asia, said Thet Zaw Naing of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) (Myanmar Program). Since 2016, the Forest Department has been working on the conservation and research of the ...