The forest in northern Gabon didn’t look like a battleground. It was a patchwork of hunting trails and village paths, home to fruit trees and ancestral graves. When a logging concession encroached and the community of Massaha protested, their pleas traveled poorly through official channels. Then the story was reported, documented and read by people in a position to act. The environment minister took notice, revoked the company’s permit, and the government moved to protect the forest at the community’s request. The victory wasn’t journalism’s alone. It belonged to village leaders who organized, the officials who acted, and the laws that allowed for course correction. Yet none of it would have happened, or not as quickly, had the facts not been gathered, verified and made public.

This is how journalism drives impact at its best. It doesn’t draft statutes, deploy police or plant trees. It supplies the oxygen those actions require: credible information, in time, in public.

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Asia Centre’s first of seven report reveals that climate disinformation puts indigenous people at risk of proper decision-making and action to protect themselves, urging the media to ensure circulation of accurate information

Failure to address climate disinformation could hinder indigenous people’s agency from taking meaningful action against climate change and deforestation, a report found, suggesting that the media should safeguard the circulation of accurate information.

According to Asia Centre researcher Lai Wen-Ling, rapid digital transformation in Cambodia has fuelled the circulation of general disinformation, which in turn has led to the specific dissemination of climate disinformation.

She highlighted four forms of climate disinformation: state-aligned one-sided climate discourses, false climate solutions, corporate greenwashing stances and denial of deforestation narratives.

Collectively, the climate disinformation reflects broader dynamics in which official messaging obscures the environmental and social consequences of development projects, suppresses critical debate and sidelines Indigenous and local community voices, Asia Centre said in a statement on Monday.

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The post Climate Disinformation Can Impact Indigenous People’s Work – Report first appeared on Open Development Mekong.

The post Final Hurdle cleared for Thailand’s first law to protect ethnic groups’ way of life first appeared on Open Development Mekong.

MONDULKIRI – Two trailblazing female graduates from the Institute of Technology of Cambodia (ITC) are breaking barriers in the gold mining industry.  They’re tackling key roles as a surveyor and a metallurgist at Renaissance Minerals (Cambodia) Ltd in Mondulkiri province, overcoming challenges related to gender and demanding work schedules.

Renaissance Minerals, a subsidiary of Australia’s Emerald Resources NL, employs nearly 700 Cambodians, including 60 women, at its gold mining site.  Around 90 employees are from overseas.

Chhun Thhey, originally from Battambang province, has been making her mark as a surveyor at the company since August 2023, after earning her bachelor’s degree.

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The post Gender No Barrier: Women Excel in Demanding Gold Mining Roles first appeared on Open Development Mekong.

Despite experiencing systematic social, economic and cultural marginalization, women like Noon, Dao Prasuk and Pornpimol remain determined to assert their communities’ rights to existence and to protect rivershed commons for generations to come, contesting the widespread public assumptions that large-scale hydropower and water diversion infrastructure are required to propel the region’s development forward, write Pai Deetes, Phairin Sohsai and Tanya L. Roberts Davis of International Rivers (IR)

This weekend, urban centres across the country and beyond will be the sites of public gatherings commemorating International Women’s Day, celebrating hard-won legal advances while raising collective consciousness of the gendered injustice amidst economic and resource disparities, migration, war and militarization. Less visible yet no less important to highlight are the day-to-day efforts being led by women to challenge violence against the rivers, land, Indigenous Peoples’ cultures, their bodies and their very rights to existence. At a time when we must confront the realities of the climate crisis, compounded by a race to blast, mine and clear sacred lands surrounding the Mekong and Salween Rivers, listening to, learning from and working in solidarity with women of riparian communities is imperative.

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The post From the Riverbanks of the Salween and Mekong to the Halls of Justice: Women Challenging Mainstream Assumptions and Asserting Collective Rights first appeared on Open Development Mekong.

The United Nations’ cultural agency recommended Thursday that Laos invite a monitoring mission to the historic city of Luang Prabang, a World Heritage Site where a nearby dam project on the Mekong River has raised concerns it could lose the coveted status.

While the World Heritage Committee welcomed Laos’ efforts to improve data collection on the possible effect of the dam and mitigate any harm to the UNESCO site, it recommended the country invite a new team of experts to assess the state of conservation first-hand.

Laos seemed agreeable to the idea, with its delegate telling the group at its annual meeting in New Delhi that authorities were prepared to work “hand in hand” with UNESCO to preserve the site.

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According to a directive released on Tuesday, Cambodia ordered all public schools to reduce two hours off their regular school days due to soaring temperatures in the ongoing dry season.

The directive said the normal morning school session from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. will now conclude an hour earlier, while the afternoon session, usually lasting from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., will commence an hour later.

“During the dry season in 2024, the weather is scorching, and temperatures can be higher than 40 degrees Celsius between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.,” Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister Hang Chuon Naron said in the directive.

He said the measure is to prevent heat-related illnesses.

Chan Yutha, a spokesman and secretary of state for the Ministry of Water Resources and Meteorology, said last week that Cambodia had recorded the highest-ever temperature in this hot season in about 170 years.

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BANGKOK —  Myanmar’s jailed former leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been moved from prison to house arrest as a health measure due to a heat wave, the military government said. On Wednesday it also granted amnesty for over 3,000 prisoners to mark this week’s traditional New Year holiday.

Suu Kyi, 78, and Win Myint, the 72-year-old former president of her ousted government, were among the elderly and infirm prisoners moved from out of prison because of the severe heat, the military’s spokesperson, Maj. Gen. General Zaw Min Tun, told foreign media representatives late Tuesday. The move has not yet been publicly announced in Myanmar.

Suu Kyi’s transfer comes as the army has been suffering a string of major defeats in its fight against pro-democracy resistance fighters and their allies in ethnic minority guerrilla forces. The nationwide conflict began after the army ousted the elected government in February 2021, imprisoned Suu Kyi and began suppressing nonviolent protests that sought a return to democratic rule.

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Phnom Penh 12 December 2023. Women are vastly underrepresented in news stories produced by Cambodian media, with an exclusively women presence found only in 5% of all stories. In comparison, the stories that feature only men, make half of all the news published and broadcasted in Cambodian media. This is one the key findings of UNESCO’s report “Who makes the Cambodian news?”, an assessment of women’s presence and portrayal in Cambodian news, which was launched by UNESCO on 12 December 2023 in Phnom Penh. 

The report highlights that from all the spokespersons quoted as information sources in the news, just 2% are women. When interviewing specialized informants on a given topic, only 7% of the experts quoted in the news were women, and even when sourcing a general commentary from the public through “Vox-pops”, women’s opinions and voices made up just 12% of the citizens interviewed.

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WASHINGTON — Paranoia has become something of a way of life for Sarada Taing, ever since the journalist received violent threats from a pro-government social media personality in Cambodia in June.

In one audio message sent via Facebook Messenger on June 19, Pheng Vannak, a former police officer, said he “wants to chop my head if I come to Cambodia,” said Taing, who lives in Washington.

In a second audio message, the caller said he knew people in the United States who also hated Taing. Days later, on June 22, Vannak hosted a Facebook Live discussion, during which he said he would not think twice about killing Taing.

Both messages — reviewed and translated by VOA — are profanity-laced tirades that include threats of sexual violence against the journalist’s family.

“I feel really shocked, and I got really scared. My family is very scared,” said Taing. “I don’t have any mechanism to protect myself very much.”

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The post Far-Reaching Threats a Worry for Cambodian-American Journalist first appeared on Open Development Mekong.