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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...

While being broadly framed as 17 separate and diverse elements, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and associated targets inherently interlink with one another making up indivisible parts of sustainability from a systemic perspective. Actions or measures taken for achieving one goal may be mutually reinforcing or contradictory with achieving...

This paper provides an overview of Thailand's national policy on municipal solid waste (MSW) management and recycling, which is aligned to the country's sufficiency economic policy and the 3Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle). It summarizes the current actual waste management and recycling scenario in the country, provides examples of local initiatives to...

Cambodia is one of the most vulnerable countries to climatic and non-climatic vagaries in the Southeast Asia. Annual river floods along the Tonle Sap and Mekong Rivers are more common during monsoon season and are the most important developmental concerns in the region. Cambodia has put in place the National Committee for Disaster Management that...

Burning is the most simple and cheap method for small-scale farmers to manage plant residue. This practice does prvide immediate benefits to farmers, but the wider immediate and long-term negative impacts are much larger. The objective of this study is to elaborate an alternative model for environmental and economically sound plant residue...

The purpose of this review paper is to demonstrate the best practice worldwide in attempting to link sustainable development planning at all levels with environmental performance. It also reviews the progress to date in the GMS with both sustainable development planning and environmental performance assessment and the need for increased linkage.