Articles

Pongsak Tonnampeych—or Bang, as his family and friends call him—had just finished his breakfast on the morning of 5 March 2021 when the helicopters touched down and forestry authorities came to evict him and his family from their homes. Their shoddily assembled home on the upper Bang Kloi River could barely be called a house, Bang recalls.

Since 2008, women from Sabah’s Sukau Village have planted trees to connect forest fragments and preserve the area’s biodiversity. COVID-19 stopped their work for months, resulting in the deaths of many newly planted trees. Now, they have returned to the forest.

#[Road to Malaysia's Tourism Recovery Series 3], Tourism is inseparable from travel. As such, the recovery of the tourism industry is directly connected to freedom of movement.

#[Road to Malaysia's Tourism Recovery Series 2], In an effort to control the spread of the coronavirus outbreak across borders, Malaysia shuttered their international borders for nearly two years.

#[Road to Malaysia's Tourism Recovery Series 1] Tourism has always been one of the main sources of income for the Malaysia economy. Prior to the pandemic outbreak, tourism pumped some RM86 billion into Malaysia in 2019.

The island of Timor is about 700 kilometres north of the Australian coastline and lies at the most southern point of the largest archipelago in the world, Indonesia.

As tension increases in the South China Sea and the drafting of the Asean-China Code of Conduct goes ‘nowhere,’ half of Asean’s 10 member-states should unite and craft a framework that will manage tensions in the disputed waters, analysts say.

The pandemic has strained reforestation work in Sabah’s biodiverse Lower Kinabatangan region, but locals continue to replant trees in an effort to secure their livelihoods, protect endangered species and regrow carbon-capturing rainforests.

Southeast Asian domestic labourers often migrate to wealthier countries where they are excluded from labour protections and left vulnerable to abuse. While COVID-19 has made labour conditions worse, some migrant workers have found their own ways to resist.

Community conservationists in Selangor are working to save the Shah Alam forest from planned development by showcasing its threatened biodiversity, disproving government claims and building support. Can they repeat an earlier victory by other forest defenders?

As traditional Khmer arts struggle with the loss of tourism dollars, artists see Cambodia’s reopening as a chance for revival and vital industry change

As Cambodia is reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic with plans to open the country for fully vaccinated travelers in the weeks to come, optimism is running high that the tourism sector will recover. But beyond all those hopes, challenges such as the lack of direct international flights and some stringent COVID-19 measures stand in the way. 

Indonesian migrant workers face an arduous fate amidst the pandemic. Some were not paid by their employers, fired, and were forced to seek side hustles in the middle of strict government restrictions. In commemorating the International Migrant Workers Day on December 18th, and working in tandem with Malaysia Kini, Tempo features the trial and tribulation of these workers the government consider as “heroes of foreign exchange reserves” during the pandemic.