But the scale of tourism is putting too much pressure on the island’s infrastructure. Statistics from the local natural resources and environment office show the island generates nearly 200 tons of waste and 18,000 cubic metres of waste water a day while the collection capacity is only around 60 per cent, according to a 2019 report published by the magazine of the Vietnam Environment Administration.
Category: Region
Selected environmental stories from media outlets in the Mekong region and beyond.
The Oscars for Earth Day
Best International Feature Film: The Rocket (2013). Filmed in Laos, the movie opens with the main character, a young boy, swimming down to the depths of a lake to visit his old village, now inundated beneath a reservoir created by a hydropower dam. Soon, his relocated village must move once again to make way for yet another reservoir; a character in a temporary encampment laments that the country is selling electricity to “all of bloody Asia” with none left for them.
Locals fear water conflict as new industrial boom arrives along Thailand’s eastern seaboard
“Even before the EEC, there was a troublesome lack of water in the eastern seaboard area,” said Somnuck Jongmeewasin, a conservationist and research director at EEC Watch. “In my local community, there’s a lack of water. If we want water, we have to buy and it’s very expensive. The industrial sector can get the water because they have money. This is the inequality.”
Japan, Thailand, Vietnam Vie with China for Influence in Impoverished, Landlocked Laos
Laos is getting a new round of aid and investment offers this year as foreign governments hope to dilute China’s increasing influence over the poor, landlocked country, observers in the region say.
Scientists to catalogue mollusc diversity in Tonle Sap
The surveys in the Tonle Sap detected at least 15 species of bivalves and 16 species of gastropods, including three species that had never before been recorded in Cambodia. They team also deposited specimens at three different natural history museums to begin the first freshwater mollusc collections in the region.
Sluice gates to prevent salinity in Mekong tributary
The government has approved the construction of six sluice gates on a tributary of the Mekong River to help keep out saltwater and store freshwater.
World’s oil and gas majors cannot be expected to save Myanmar
Though one could accuse the oil companies that are staying put of being self-serving by not heeding to the calls of pro-democracy protesters and human rights groups, it would be a flawed, one-dimensional view of a complex and multilayered problem.
National forest service payment mechanism generates 120 million USD annually
In addition, the project trained approximately 350,000 people on climate change adaptation, forest management and livelihoods development and helped over 200,000 people implement climate change risk reduction practices in the Mekong and Red River Deltas.
Thailand Lays Out Bold EV Plan, Wants All Electric Cars by 2035
Thailand aims to only sell zero-emission vehicles in the country from 2035 as it works to transform itself from a Southeast Asian hub for the production of conventional autos to one making electric cars.