As societies around the world focus on containing the spread of the novel coronavirus, millions of people in Southeast Asia have another worry on their minds: How to put food on their table amid a devastating drought. In Thailand, historically low levels of rainfall since last summer have taken a heavy toll on the agriculture sector, which employs 11 million people. Inland fishing communities across the region are reporting drastically smaller catches. And in Vietnam, a state of emergency was declared earlier this month in five provinces in the southern Mekong Delta, which produces more than half of the country’s [...]
Climate Change
President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement sparked widespread criticism beyond U.S. borders as well as debate on how best to proceed without Washington’s involvement. The WPR series examines the effects of climate change, and the trends that shape climate policy, in countries around the world.
In consecutive victories for the country’s oil-producing provinces, Canadian courts recently turned down challenges to a contentious plan to expand a major oil pipeline. Last month, the Supreme Court rejected a bid by British Columbia to block the expansion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline, which would triple the flow of oil from the tar sands of Alberta to Canada’s Pacific Coast, allowing more oil to be shipped to growing export markets in Asia. A similar legal challenge from indigenous groups, largely based on environmental concerns, was dismissed by a federal appeals court last week. The court decisions are likely to [...]
At first glance, the Nile valley at Wad Ramli, an hour’s drive north of Khartoum, looks as lush and fertile as ever. Date palms sag, heavy with fruit along the banks. Neat rows of barley await harvesting in the heat. With thousands of miles of unbroken desert to the west and many hundreds to the east, this narrow, green strip—at points only 200 meters wide—still closely resembles the life-giving refuge from a hostile environment that it has been for millennia. But ask the farmers, fishermen or anyone else who depends on the river for their livelihood, and they’ll tell you [...]