Across the open door of the immigration office, a black dog sleeps, his ears twitching. It is a slow day at the border, under the tropical afternoon sun.
Category: Region
Selected environmental stories from media outlets in the Mekong region and beyond.
Imagining Dawei
There is a lone white concrete marker at Dawei’s Kilometre Zero, where storms come ashore from the Andaman Sea and where the long, unpaved road to Thailand begins.
There is little now auguring that the white marker will one day be at the centre of Dawei special economic zone (SEZ), a mammoth project more than one-quarter the size of Singapore. In its entirety it will cost billions of dollars to build, potentially creating hundreds of thousands of jobs and generating up to 5 percent of Myanmar’s GDP.
Cambodian Troops Bulldoze Villagers’ Crops in Bid to Seize Land
Troops assigned to a light infantry unit destroyed village fields in southern Cambodia’s Kampot province on Monday in a bid to expand the property used by a commune set up for retired army soldiers, sources said.
Environmental Group Says ‘Inactive’ Government Has Failed Its Forests
The Prey Lang Community Network, which works to protect Cambodian forests, has been selected by UNDP for an Equator Prize, for outstanding community organizing. In an interview with VOA Khmer, the group’s spokesman, Seng Sok Heng, says the government is “inactive” in protecting Cambodian forests, some of the last rainforest in Southeast Asia.
Cambodian Official Urges Provincial Government to Shutter Illegal Gold Mine
A top mining official on Wednesday urged the government of northeastern Cambodia’s Ratanakiri province to crack down on a group of Vietnamese running an illegal gold mining operation villagers and rights groups say is being protected by local authorities.
IFC to lead sustainable hydro in Myanmar
The International Finance Corporation (IFC) has signed to advise the government on environmental and social risk management for hydropower projects nationwide.
Group Proposes Signing UN Water Pact
Environmental groups yesterday urged the government to seek greater legal clarity among the Mekong River countries about how they should share its resources.
A special zone on Myanmar’s border
Ambitious plans to turn Dawei, on the Myanmar-Thai border, into a special economic zone and industrial park, meet with resistance from the locals
Greedy developers often to blame for floods
Streets were turned into riv-ers in Ha Noi and HCM City in a matter of hours over the last few days in what have been described as historic rainfalls. Traffic was thrown into chaos as thousands of residents scrambled to get home in the driving rain that lasted for hours at a time.
Zone ‘A’ of Thilawa Special Economic Zone (SEZ) opens
The Grand Opening Ceremony of the phase one of Thilawa Special Economic Zone was held Wednesday at the zone which is 20 kilometers from the commercial city Yangon. The opening ceremony was attended by Vice President U NyanTun and the deputy prime minister of Japan Taro Aso and other officials from both countries.