Southeast Asia

“While nuclear power may not be an option under the Duterte administration, it is still a viable power source for the country’s baseload requirements moving forward,” Philippine Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi said during the recent Alliance Global Group Sustainability Conference in the Philippines.  The energy department head have yet again thrown his support in pushing for a nuclear program for the country.

A virus riding on another virus. That is how the ‘infodemic’ is raging in online spaces around the outbreak of the novel coronavirus called COVID-19, which has been on just about everyone’s radar since late January 2020. As grave as the quest to manage the respiratory disease and cure those ill with it is not only the challenge of using facts versus fear - but how to create and keep avenues of information that withstand the unrelenting drip of skewed, confused, partially true to totally false information, to racist and prejudiced views, or a cocktail of these.

This article offers the choices for local communities in the Kendeng Mountain range in Central Java Indonesia to expand their campaign to regain their environmental rights based on experiences from other communities in the world.

The disappearance of the honey bee is widely publicized, especially in Europe and North America, with colony collapse disorder observed in apiaries of the western honey bee, Apis mellifera. Much less interest, however, has been paid to Southeast Asian native honey bees whose fate also deserves attention. This article explores the conservation challenges of the eight native honey bee species of Southeast Asia.

China is waging an unprecedented information campaign in Thailand through traditional and new media platforms, thanks to a sluice of partnerships with Thai media throughout 2019. Similar pattern is seen in the Southeast Asian region, where China is fast expanding its political, economic, and strategic stakes.

Perhaps, the meaning of ‘development’ would only be reimagined and broadened when there is a tangible evidence showing that land creation doesn’t necessarily lead to the economic growth as promised. And that a less-orderly, poorer neighbourhood is not necessarily a place devoid of socioeconomic potential. It is commonly assumed that a society and its economic capacity will eventually fall into decay if it does not possess new land for capital to grow. Perhaps it is the lack of foresight and wisdom in the managing the existing land that has been the core problem.

Vietnam’s ASEAN chairmanship in 2020 is particularly important in the transition year focusing on strengthening ASEAN's sustainable cohesion, both in political and security issues and in economic and social matters. To guide the year of the chairmanship, Vietnam has studied and proposed long-term initiatives and Hanoi also hopes that even after the chairmanship of Vietnam has ended, its proposed initiatives will be continuously promoted and implemented in the upcoming year.

Plastic is a brilliant invention. Through its uses in medicine, public health and in urban planning, it has likely saved many lives. A right relationship with it begins with acknowledging the importance of plastic. At the same time, a lot of the ways we use plastic today is non-essential. In fact, one could argue that by designing plastic to be used in such a careless and thoughtless way is disrespectful of the invention itself. It could be out there saving lives, but instead it is used to carry potato chips for 12 minutes. It is not the plastic that is the problem, but the way we choose to design it, source it, produce it and use it.

Like in any other country, plastic is widely used and it is everywhere to be found in the Lao PDR, a landlocked country in Southeast Asia with a population of 7 million people. Plastic has become part of our modern life. Yet as omnipresent as it is, our ever-increasing reliance on single-use plastics, our throwaway culture and poor waste management system have created a huge problem.

The only way to improve the global problem of plastic is for environmental stewardship by every individual, company and government on earth. That requires an understanding that helping the planet goes beyond saying no to straws and plastic bags, good though that first step may be.