
Articles by Tom Fawthrop
A London-born author, journalist and film-maker, Tom Fawthrop has extensively covered the developing world during the last three decades and lived mostly in South-East Asia. He has been a regular SE Asia contributor for the Guardian/the Economist in the UK & many online media during his 30 + years living in Phnom Penh, Manila and Chiang Mai Thailand. In East Timor in 1999, he witnessed the burning and pillaging of the capital Dili, after a referendum that bravely voted for independence from Indonesia’s annexation reporting for the Guardian UK, DPA German news agency and the Melbourne Age. His films on Mekong include “Where Have All the Fish Gone?’2013 & “Killing the Mekong Dam by Dam.” 2018 (All his films are available as DVDs from [email protected]) The co-author of one of the first books about the region’s first international justice tribunal here in Cambodia titled ‘Getting away with Genocide? Elusive Justice & the Khmer Rouge Tribunal” (Pluto Press UK), it was published in 2004. In 1989 he produced and directed a documentary for the Channel 4 in the UK Dreams & Nightmares –filmed inside Cambodia ten Years after the ouster of the Pol Pot regime. His environmental work has prompted to many invitations to deliver lectures and film screenings from universities and colleges in the region including Panasastra University Phnom Penh, NUS Singapore, Tu Duc University Ho Chi Minh City, Chulalungkorn /CMU universities in Thailand, East Anglia and Kings College London Universities in the UK.Tom Fawthrop can be contacted email:[email protected]


In Laos, a ‘very dangerous dam’ threatens an ancient world heritage site
Special series
Forest Trackers
- Mennonite colonies linked to deforestation of Indigenous territories and protected areas in Paraguay
- Deforestation on the rise in Quintana Roo, Mexico, as Mennonite communities move in
- Logged and loaded: Cambodian prison official suspected in massive legalized logging operation
- Bolivian national park hit hard by forest fires in 2022, satellite data show

Oceans
- ‘Manta grid’ provides a ray of hope against industrial bycatch threat
- As oceans warm, temperate reef species edge closer to extinction, study shows
- Can we control marine invaders by eating them?
- Sea level rise looms, even for the best-prepared country on Earth

Amazon Conservation
- RSPO suspension of Brazil palm oil exporter tied to Mongabay land-grabbing report
- Tropical forest regeneration offsets 26% of carbon emissions from deforestation
- Plan to mine ‘clean energy’ metals in Colombian Amazon splits communities
- Peru congress debates stripping isolated Indigenous people of land and protections

Land rights and extractives
- Plan to mine ‘clean energy’ metals in Colombian Amazon splits communities
- Peru congress debates stripping isolated Indigenous people of land and protections
- Brazil tackles illegal miners, but finds their mercury legacy harder to erase
- Lula government scrambles to overcome Yanomami crisis, but hurdles remain

Endangered Environmentalists
- ‘You don’t kill people to protect forests’: New Thai parks chief raises alarm
- Vietnam’s environmental NGOs face uncertain status, shrinking civic space
- ‘We lost the biggest ally’: Nelly Marubo on her friend Bruno Pereira’s legacy
- Murders of 2 Pataxó leaders prompt Ministry of Indigenous Peoples to launch crisis office

Indonesia's Forest Guardians
- Pioneer agroforester Ermi, 73, rolls back the years in Indonesia’s Gorontalo
- After 20 years and thousands of trees planted, Kalimantan’s veteran forester persists
- Aziil Anwar, Indonesian coral-based mangrove grower, dies at 64
- A utopia of clean air and wet peat amid Sumatra’s forest fire ‘hell’

Conservation Effectiveness
- For key Bangladesh wetland, bid for Ramsar status is no guarantee of protection
- Biodiversity, human rights safeguards crucial to nature-based solutions: Critics
- Protecting canids from planet-wide threats offers ecological opportunities
- Mangrove forest loss is slowing toward a halt, new report shows

Southeast Asian infrastructure
- As Indonesia’s new capital takes shape, risks to wider Borneo come into focus
- Tunnel collapse at dam project in orangutan habitat claims yet another life
- Sulawesi nickel plant coats nearby homes in toxic dust
- Indonesia’s grand EV plans hinge on a ‘green’ industrial park that likely isn’t
