Showing 1 - 10 of 10
New tourism path for climate survival
Oped, Kamphol Pantakua, Published on 20/08/2025
» Hotel bookings are vanishing. Tour buses sit idle. Empty beaches. The culprit? Not mass protests. Not pandemics. But smoke, dust, and heat. Tourism fuels Thailand's economy, yet smog, heat waves, and flash floods are rapidly choking it. Can paradise still sell if it's unbreathable?
Taking on parks graft
Oped, Editorial, Published on 21/07/2025
» For a decade, Hat Noppharat Thara–Mu Koh Phi Phi National Park, especially the world-famous Maya Bay, has stood as a jewel of natural heritage tarnished by corruption. Despite repeated public outcries and half-hearted reform efforts, fee leakages and graft run wild.
Lifelines for small island states
Oped, Maya Delaney & Aminath Shauna, Published on 28/01/2025
» Small island developing states (Sids) are on the front lines of climate change, threatened by rising sea levels, extreme weather events, and ocean warming and acidification, despite contributing the least to global greenhouse gas emissions. This now poses an existential risk to our ways of life, our livelihoods, and the very ground beneath our feet.
Balancing sustainability, wealth
Oped, Caesar Indra, Published on 17/10/2023
» Under the shimmering turquoise waters, vibrant-coloured corals pulse with life as marine life weaves through what was, for a while, a scene of unprecedented blight. Thailand's Maya Bay is experiencing a resurgence following a four-year closure. Behind that transformation from a damaging symbol of overtourism to a beacon of sustainable travel in Southeast Asia, lies a cautionary tale of how tourism can leave a trail of destruction.
'Beach' case settled at last
Oped, Editorial, Published on 16/09/2022
» A ruling has finally been handed down for a court case related to the production of the Hollywood movie The Beach. A Supreme Court verdict on Tuesday ordered the Forestry Department to restore Maya Bay, which was environmentally damaged during the movie's filming that began in November 1998.
Regal exemplar
Oped, Postbag, Published on 15/09/2022
» Re: “Crowds brave the night to pay respects,” (BP, Sept 14).
Securing women's body autonomy
Oped, Natalia Kanem, Published on 06/07/2021
» By the age of 24, Maya Bohara had borne four children, and she and her husband decided that their family was large enough. For nine years thereafter, despite living in a poor region of Nepal, she could rely on a local health clinic for injectable contraceptives.
Humanity might have been born to live in cities
Oped, Greg Woolf, Published on 29/04/2021
» The spread of cities over the last 6,000 years is a global phenomenon -- not because cities originated in one place and spread out over the planet, but because people invented cities, out of nothing, so many times.
Time to restore human relations with biodiversity
Oped, Qu Dongyu & Inger Andersen, Published on 30/05/2020
» The Covid-19 pandemic is a deep and lasting shock at global level; we all know that returning to "business as usual" is not an option. It is imperative that we perceive the crisis as an opportunity to rebuild -- and even improve -- livelihoods in a sustainable way. High on the agenda is restoring harmony to humanity's relationship with nature, and particularly with biodiversity.