The herding communities of the Tibetan Plateau are facing many struggles to protect their grasslands and herding livestock that are integral not only to their livelihoods but also their culture and identity. Mkha Be explains the changes and challenges facing the herding communities through a nomadic woman’s personal story.
Commons are telling: People’s folktales and legends on their environment
Folktales, legends, and traditional stories that local community members tell represent their experiences and views with the environment. They play an important role when the community utilizes and sustains natural commons such as water, fisheries, forests, minerals, and land, and are in fact themselves valuable and irreplaceable commons.
Large dams are not the answer to climate change in the Mekong Region
Climate change already affects Thai communities who rely on the Mekong River’s natural resources. Areeya Tivasuradej shows how the Clean Development Mechanism by supporting hydropower dams that devastate communities and ecosystems is a false solution to climate change, and calls for a new approach following Climate Justice principles.
Dawei’s coastal calm disrupted by Thailand’s industrial plans
The beautiful coastline of Dawei in south Myanmar could become a polluted, industrial wasteland if Thailand builds the Dawei Special Economic Zone (DSEZ).
Laos Vegas: Rolling the dice on rural development
Lao PDR is aiming high by promoting casinos mainly with Chinese investors. But these monumental structures are endangering local livelihoods, dispossessing farmers of land and inviting armed crime into previously quiet rural areas. Melinda Boh explores these dubious investments taken in the name of rural development and reducing poverty.
Dam EIAs enable “river grabbing”
Governments and developers promote large hydropower as clean energy necessary for economic development. In most cases, developers prepare Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs). But rather than raise questions about whether the dam should be built, EIAs become the first step to enable “river grabbing”
Seeking World Bank accountability on Boeung Kak Lake
The community living around Boeung Kak Lake in Phnom Penh, Cambodia have been fighting eviction by developers who wish to fill up the lake and turn it into a luxury urban development. This article outlines how members of the community took on the powerful World Bank and eventually put a stop to the eviction.
The politics of place naming reaches the Salween River
The debate about the power of naming is long-running and contentious, engaging citizens and colonizers, academics and activists. “South” of China, “East” of India, Southeast Asia is a name that came primarily from people not native to these regions who instead imagined the region through acts of war and nation building.
Integration for whom: The ASEAN Economic Community
The ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), to be launched in 2015, aims to create a single market and production base. Dorothy Guerrero examines whether this advances socio-economic development in the ASEAN region, or results in damage to people’s general well-being, human rights and environmental security.
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