A city region is a unit comprising an urban core and surrounding peri-urban and, occasionally, rural areas. The Regional Circulating and Ecological Sphere (R-CES) proposed by the Japanese government is a guiding approach for policymaking that prioritises the harmonised flow of resources between urban and rural areas, low-carbon society, circular...
This summary report presents the results of the technical analysis of the third biennial update report of Thailand, conducted by a team of technical experts in accordance with the modalities and procedures contained in the annex to decision 20/CP.19. The author at IGES (Chisa Umemiya) served as one of the co-leads.
The crisis ignited by COVID-19 has transformed the volume and composition of waste generation and requires a dynamic response from policy makers. This study selected Bangkok as a case study to semi-quantitatively examine the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on consumer-generated food and plastic waste by examining changes in lifestyles and...
Ensuring sustainable consumption and production (SCP) patterns is an important task for achieving Sustainable Development Goal 12 by 2030. To facilitate international and domestic collaboration toward regional SCP, we developed a collaborative workshop method to generate and structure ideas about consumption and production (CP) patterns and...
This technical report showcases the case study that was conducted as part of the ASEAN Project on Disaster Risk Reduction by Integrating Climate Change Projection into Landslide Risk Assessment (ASEAN DRR-CCA). Its main purpose is to showcase the application of the methodologies described in the guidelines developed as part of this project. The...
The Himalaya and Hindu Kush Region (HKH) is one of the world's most fragile ecosystems in terms of climate change and its impacts, such as, slow- and fast-onset disasters. Traditionally, nature and human beings have co-existed in this area with indigenous and local knowledge (ILK) systems and practices being used in different ways, such as for...
Understanding Myanmar’s solid waste systems presents a challenge for anyone working in the sector. While waste collection and disposal challenges faced by Myanmar’s cities and towns share similarities, strategies to overcome them evolve locally and are often not well-communicated between different local government bodies. Data on the country’s...
Although it is widely acknowledged that forests provide critical ecosystem services for human survival and well-being, in the Asia-Pacific region forests are being converted to other land uses and degraded at alarming rates. One underlying factor for this destruction of forests is market failure. Forests are cleared for other land uses or degraded...
Today, 54% of the world’s population live in urban areas, a proportion that is expected to increase to 66% by 2050. Major cities and municipalities in the region rely either fully or partially on groundwater. Four highly relevant Asian cities (Bangkok, Bandung, Ho Chi Minh and Lahore) were selected which bear groundwater dependency in the range of...