Mongabay series: Southeast Asian infrastructure

PAK BENG, Laos — At the Happy Bar, on the bank of the Mekong River, the Bob Marley tape starts up at the same time every night after the tourist…

JAKARTA — When he stood for president in 2014, Joko Widodo promised to give communities living in or near Indonesia’s vast “forest zone” greater control over 12.7 million hectares of…

Village leaders in Sumberejo, East Java, once had plans to entice travelers to their coastal town. Tourist facilities were planned for Ndaki Beach where the waves of the Indian Ocean…

On the trail of a conservation group conducting a wildlife monitoring survey, we stop the 4x4 on the road and walk along the red earth to check on camera traps.…

At a time when much of Cambodia is developing at a breakneck speed, where smartphones and BMWs have become almost as ubiquitous on the streets of Phnom Penh as saffron-robed…

Despite their stated aim of boosting low-carbon growth, World Bank policy loans to countries like Indonesia are creating subsidies for coal, gas and oil projects, according to a report released…

A controversial bridge appears to be inching toward construction in northern Malaysian Borneo. For more than a year, scientists and conservationists have argued that the 350-meter (1,148-foot) Sukau bridge crossing…

Snaking down the length of the Mekong River the beautifully detailed map looks strikingly like those marking the distribution of unexploded ordnance in Laos. The red dots that pockmark the…

"Everywhere you look, it's the infrastructure that's very often the first stage in complete profound change," explains William Laurance. Laurance is a Distinguished Research Professor at James Cook University in…

Papua New Guinea announced last week that it is deploying its military to quell violence in Hela Province, home to the country's largest oil and gas project.  Tribal conflict in…

Tun Lin has a unique occupation: he is the security guard at Linno limestone karst cave on the bank of the Salween River in Myanmar’s southeast Karen (Kayin) State. He…

“To most people on earth — even biodiversity scientists — the Salween Basin is like the dark side of the moon." So begins a 2008 study of the flora and…

Southeast Sulawesi Province consists mostly of water. Around 75 percent of the province's territory lies offshore, in the Banda Sea and the Gulf of Boni.  Its coasts and waters are…

Before reaching the Keng Kham valley, the bright green Pang river, the Salween’s major tributary running south through central Shan state, splits into three parallel rivers that form myriad channels…

Melaka - The expanse of sand stretches hundreds of meters in both directions, featureless and flat, its dusty monotony alleviated only by the excavators, trucks and dredgers that dump sand…

“I just get poorer and poorer,” Leh Paw, a Karen woman recently displaced due to conflict in Myanmar’s Karen (Kayin) state, told Mongabay in November. This is the third time…

"We held each other's hands and moved slowly in the dark, smiling. We desired, above all, a good night's sleep, but that was not possible as we pressed on to…

Remote-controlled vehicles will soon begin churning up the ocean floor off the cost of Papua New Guinea, searching for millions of tons of copper and gold. In 2011, Canada-based Nautilus…

The developers behind Islet G, a small artificial island off the coast of Jakarta, may have finally been given the legal green light to continue the project, which has been…

It seems there is always something to take from the island of Kalimantan, Indonesia. The island, also known as Borneo, has already been vastly deforested — logged and cleared, mined…

No roads shall pass through Mount Leuser National Park. So said the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry in response to just such a proposal from the governor of North Sumatra…

Last week, Indonesia joined 81 other nations by signing United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Paris Agreement, which replaces the Kyoto Protocol as the country’s commitment to reducing its…

Driving down a winding road here in Indonesia’s North Sumatra province, one finally arrives at the sweeping vista of Lake Toba. Ringed with pine-studded hills, the volcanic lake was thronged…

Indonesia's Minister of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Susi Pudjiastuti has publicly pledged to intervene in the case of Pulau Bangka, a tiny island off the northeastern tip of Sulawesi where…

A BuzzFeed News investigation has shined new light on the extent to which a secretive international legal system has enabled global mining companies to muscle their way into Indonesia’s last…

The Indonesian environment ministry has denied the Aceh provincial government’s proposal to rezone part of Mount Leuser National Park for geothermal development, reacting to opposition from conservationists who argued the…

The governor of Indonesia’s Aceh province is moving forward with a plan to rezone part of Mount Leuser National Park for geothermal development, despite opposition from conservationists who say the…