Selected environmental stories from media outlets in the Mekong region and beyond.
The companies involved in planning and building special economic zones (SEZs) in Dawei and Kyaukphyu are failing to disclose impact assessments and other information relating to the massive projects, according to the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ).
Progress on the Dawei SEZ, in southern Burma’s Tenasserim Division, has been delayed by a lack of funding, but the governments of Burma, Thailand and, more recently, Japan, are all involved in a project that looks to be moving ahead.
Mon State advocacy groups will continue to monitor the activity of the state government and Toyo Thai Corporation Public Company Limited (TTCL) after representatives met recently to discuss the gas energy investment options, according to groups in opposition to the coal-fired plant.
The groups will keep an eye on the government and TTCL due to concerns that the meeting would lead to a resumption in construction work at TTCL’s proposed coal-fired power plant project in Anndin Village.
On 10 June the representatives of TTCL, led by its chairperson, met with the state chief minister and government officials at the chief minister’s guest hall. At the meeting, they discussed the potential for a liquid propane gas bottling plant, which would provide gas for cooking instead of firewood.
Journalists from across the Mekong region met villagers, government officials and NGOs to understand and write stories about the costs and benefits of the Don Sahong dam. Mekong Partnership for the Environment partner Cambodia Institute for Media Studies convened 20 local and four regional journalists in Stung Treng from May 26-28 to learn about the dam and it’s effect on communities, the environment and the dolphin and fish populations.
Som Khamera Ouk Fishermen in Preah Romkel commune Tharaborivat district of Stung Treng province, Cambodia are concerned that their livelihood will be harmed because of Don Sahon hydropower dam construction. This dam site is very close to Cambodia-Lao border – about 2km. Mr. Bun Thon is 44 years old and he is a member of eco-tourism committee in […]
Low prices for coal and gas are likely to persist, but will fail to prevent a fundamental transformation of the world electricity system over coming decades towards renewable sources such as wind and solar, and towards balancing options such as batteries.
The latest long-term forecast from Bloomberg New Energy Finance, entitled New Energy Outlook 2016, charts a significantly lower track for global coal, gas and oil prices than did the equivalent projection a year ago. Crucially, however, it also shows a steeper decline for wind and solar costs.
About 30 Community Mining Focal People (CMFP) from Mondolkiri, Ratanakiri and Preah Vihear province gathered on June 14 2016 in Banlung town of Ratanakiri province to present and share their implementation of advocacy plans and updates about impacts of mining on local people.
Ms. Vong Socheat, a CMFP from Mondolkiri province said that one mining company has a license to mine and the company forced villagers to give farmlands to them because the farmlands are in the exploration or exploitation area of the company. She also said that local authorities have not paid attention to those issues, but they have forced local people to leave their farmlands as it belongs to the company.
Members of the Regional Technical Working Group on Environmental Impact Assessment (RTWG on EIA, facilitated by Mekong Partnership for the Environment) participated in the Annual Conference of International Association for Impact Assessment in Nagoya, Japan in May 2016. IAIA is a global conference focusing on Impact Assessment tools and issues such as EIA, Health Impact Assessment (HIA), Public Participation, Biodiversity, Climate Change, and other topics. Here, an RTWG member shares his thoughts on the event and particularly one session “Learning-Centered Approaches to Impact Assessment.”
The Party and State will facilitate Vietnamese investment and business in Laos, President Trần Đại Quang said during a working session with Vietnamese investors in Laos yesterday.
He hailed the efforts of businesses and of the Association of Vietnamese Investors in Laos to overcome difficulties and to ensure their projects are implemented on schedule. He also asked the association and relevant ministries to co-ordinate with the Lao side to better facilitate business operations, with the focus on energy, mineral exploration, exploitation and processing, agriculture, tourism, finance and banking. And he asked businesses to take more social responsibility to reduce poverty, protect the environment, and ensure social welfare.
Sitting in the courtyard of his home in Lopburi Province, 180 kilometers north of Bangkok, Saichol Thanomsak remembers what life was like for the nearly 600 people in Moo 3 Village before Asia’s largest thin-film photovoltaic solar energy project moved in nearby. Land was not fertile and jobs were scarce, forcing breadwinners to seek employment elsewhere. For those who remained, life could be grim.
“The armed forces use nearby fields for firing practice and villagers would collect artillery shells for scrap metal,” he says. “Sometimes they blew up and there were many injuries. Today, we don’t have to take such risks. Our village benefits greatly from the solar plant. It has allowed so many of us to stay home and make a decent living.”
In a world of galloping hydro-power rapidly engulfing the developing world and new dams popping up in the Amazon, the Congo and along the Mekong, it is hard to find any important river left in the world, that has escaped unscathed and undammed.
The free-flowing Salween is the last important undammed river in East Asia, where endangered species including tigers and clouded leopards can still be found in remote parts of Myanmar’s ethnic Karen State.
From the snow-capped mountains of Tibet, the Salween rushes through steep gorges in Yunnan Province and flows through four of Myanmar’s ethnic states before emptying into the Andaman Sea.
