Asia

In South America, natural vegetation is being turned into pastureland and monocultures to support an unsustainable form of livestock production. In Africa and Asia, on the other hand, a sustainable form of livestock raising is losing ground to industrialized agriculture. Traditional local communities are the losers.

What is needed now is a special programme to resettle people living in danger in Afghanistan and to give Afghan nationals already living in Germany the right to remain and prospects for their futures!

In former evacuation zones of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, although the government of Japan pronounced it safe to resume normal life, some returnees found such a life elusive. To make life possible on their once-abandoned land, they decided to tackle radiation in their own ways. 

Currently, there is no nuclear power station that operating commercial electricity in Southeast Asian countries. However, pro-nuclear comes up with many reasons aiming to materialize the nuclear power which ranging from growing of domestic power demand to boost economic activities, reducing the electricity cost – in the case of the Philippines, to producing no Green House Gases emission, in particularly CO2.

One month after the coup in Myanmar, a peaceful protest movement, including many civil servants, has grown and continues to resist the military. It is seeking to build alternative legitimate power structures, while the regime is clamping down on the protests in increasingly violent ways. What is the background of the coup, and how are the chances for a peaceful return to democracy in Myanmar?

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is a multilateral bank for infrastructure financing and plans to become the leading global institution for financing infrastructure projects. This article shows why the bank must intensify its efforts to inform the public in a timely manner about the environmental and social risks of its projects.

Forced to follow a “no vaccine, no classes” policy, the Philippines has implemented distance-learning programs that exacerbate existing inequalities.

In Asia, the pandemic has accelerated efforts to keep citizens informed through prompt and extensive data sharing. However, this new openness has also led to concerns regarding transparency, data protection, and democratic participation.

In Singapore and South Korea, fact-checking initiatives have been effective in fighting Covid-19 disinformation. But other tactics – like confusing or overly broad laws – could be used to maintain political power.