All Stories

Delta through the lenses of foreign correspondents

By November 13, 2015

In mid August, many correspondents from Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, China, and Britain came to Mekong River Delta. They wanted to witness the impacts of climate change, sea level rise and certainly mainstream dams upstream Mekong River, affecting the granary, fish, and shrimp of the world.

Gradual loss of the Southeast Asian Rice Field

By November 13, 2015

Hundreds of kilometers of riverbank and shoreline in the Mekong River Delta are being eroded dramatically with hundreds and even thousands of hectars of land swept away annually. The place widely known as the field of Southeast Asia, annually produces 24-25 millions tonnes of rice (6-8 million tonnes of rice export) and 1.2 million tonnes of catfish, and 500,000 tonnes of shrimp, mostly for export. That field is being lost.

Opinion /

Myanmar-Thailand road cuts through last wilderness

By October 30, 2015

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.

Imagining Dawei

By October 30, 2015

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

By October 30, 2015

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.

The forest burns near Prey Lang, Cambodia in this undated handout photo.

Environmental Group Says ‘Inactive’ Government Has Failed Its Forests

By October 3, 2015

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

By October 3, 2015

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.