This report sheds light on one of the fastest-growing economic regions in the world - ASEAN. ASEAN is expected to become the world’s fourth-largest economy and the third most populous by 20230. Countries within ASEAN are in themselves diverse, with economic, political, and cultural nuances.

The recent outbreak of COVID-19 has brought the link between zoonotic diseases – those transmitted from animals to humans – and wildlife markets into sharp focus.

The COVID-19 virus that triggered a supply shock in China has now caused a global shock. Developing economies in East Asia and the Pacific (EAP), recovering from a trade war and struggling with a viral disease, now face the prospect of a global financial shock and recession.

Southeast Asia, perhaps more than any other region, encapsulates the full range of global challenges facing the management of biodiversity and trade in wildlife. Political and socio-economic disparities are large.

Given the growing international pressure to mitigate climate change and increasing fears around climate impacts, expectations of continued investment in fossil fuels in Southeast Asia’s power sector appear puzzling.

Most estimates of global mean sea-level rise this century fall below 2 m. This quantity is comparable to the positive vertical bias of the principle digital elevation model (DEM) used to assess global and national population exposures to extreme coastal water levels, NASA’s SRTM. CoastalDEM is a new DEM utilizing neural networks to reduce SRTM error. Here we show – employing CoastalDEM—that 190 M people (150–250 M, 90% CI) currently occupy global land below projected high tide lines for 2100 under low carbon emissions, up from 110 M today, for a median increase of 80 M.

Asians are predisposed to a lean heart failure (HF) phenotype. Data on the ‘obesity paradox’, reported in Western populations, are scarce in Asia and have only utilised the traditional classification of body mass index (BMI). We aimed to investigate the association between obesity (defined by BMI and abdominal measures) and HF outcomes in Asia.

A new study released to coincide with the 18th Conference to the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES CoP18) finds hundreds of Helmeted and other hornbill parts and products offered for sale on Thai social media.

This volume brings together a new set of multi-country empirical case studies that contribute to the understanding the complexities of development and resource governance in the context of climate change in the Mekong Region.

Thailand, aiming to assess the flexibility of its electricity mix in line with national expansion plans, has engaged with the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) to carry out an initial FlexTool study.

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