Selected environmental stories from media outlets in the Mekong region and beyond.
Non-tax revenue collected from the mining sector increased more than fourfold in 2015 compared with the year before, according to figures released on Wednesday by the Ministry of Mines and Energy.
Meng Saktheara, a ministry spokesman, said non-tax revenue rocketed to about $17.25 million in 2015 from just over $4 million in the previous year.
These revenues include royalties, land rent, fines and penalties, administration charges and signature bonuses.
Booming construction fuels sand mining, and threatens coastal environment and tourism, writes Denise Hruby in Earth Island Journal, February 4.
Vietnam Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has announced his government’s intention to “review development plans of all new coal plants and halt any new coal power development.”
According to Solarplaza, the Premier stated that Vietnam needs to “responsibly implement all international commitments in cutting down greenhouse gas emissions; and to accelerate investment in renewable energy.”
The announcement comes in advance of the Solar PV Trade Mission, scheduled April 18 – 22 in Hanoi and Bangkok. It is hoped the trade missions will assemble diverse high-level delegations of stakeholders from around the world into emerging markets to jointly explore and create business development opportunities.
Phorn Bopha PHNOM PENH— Civil society groups are calling for Laos’ Don Sahong hydropower dam project to be discussed when Southeast Asian leaders meet with U.S. President Barack Obama next week.Leaders of the 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations member states will converge on the Sunnylands estate in California on Feb 15-16. The unprecedented U.S.-hosted summit […]
China is more closely involved in cross-border cooperation on hydropower and water management after the six countries that share the Mekong River signed a landmark agreement late last year.
While more needs to be done between these countries to resolve disputes and encourage transparency over dam building and shared water management, the agreement signals a greater willingness to discuss areas of discord that have soured relations in the region in the past.
During their meeting in in China’s southern province of Yunnan in November 2015, the foreign ministers of China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam launched the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Mechanism (LMCM), an initiative pitched at the November 2014 Summit Meeting between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Naypyidaw, Myanmar.
Academics and NGOs in the Mekong region welcome a new book that sheds light on the significance of the evolution of legal frameworks in overpowering historical social dynamics of river communities to sustain their livelihoods and culture.
Exploring conflicts surrounding hydropower development in the Lower Mekong region the authors of The Mekong: a Socio-Legal Approach to River Basin illustrate the growing barriers laws and policies that were never a part of these communities’ cultures, and which they had no role in shaping, lie at the heart of controversy surround dam projects from the moment that are proposed.
Dawei is a seaside community of less than 5,000 families, in one of the world’s least developed corners. Myanmar’s ever widening borders, however, have lured investments here on a scale beyond anything ever conceived within Southeast Asia.
The Dawei Special Economic Zone environs nearly 200 square kilometers of industrial development, a deepsea port and associated road, rail and pipeline links to neighboring Thailand and beyond.
Photojournalist Taylor Weidman captures the faces of Dawei as they they contemplate what lies ahead. Will their fisheries and betel nut farms still provide viable livelihoods? Will new jobs actually be available to them and their children or largely to higher skilled prospects from abroad? Will environmental controls be sufficient and sufficiently enforcement to protect the community, and the natural resources that now sustain it?
Myanmar’s first report under the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) has provided levels of disclosure on companies’ activities “unthinkable” just a few years ago, NGOs and civil society organisations said. But they also see it as only a first step in pulling back the curtain on how Myanmar’s natural resources are managed.
Thai junta leader has used his absolute power to scrap regulations on the construction of power plants and factories in a bid to secure energy needs and woo investors.
Experts last week urged Cambodia to move away from large-scale hydropower and coal projects and toward more environmentally friendly sources of power or risk long-term energy insecurity, following the launch of a report by investment and advisory firm Mekong Strategic Partners in Phnom Penh. The report highlights how the increasing affordability of renewable technology combined with an international interest in efficiency and sustainability are leading most countries away from fossil fuels—with Cambodia seemingly heading in the opposite direction.
