When the progress towards achieving the goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as of 2017 was assessed earlier this year, the situation had worsened most significantly for the Southeast Asia sub-region when it came to containing the loss of land area covered by natural forest.

After making a wave of appearances on television shows featuring celebrity chefs getting their taste of tarantulas boiled, deep fried or tempura fried, the popular arachnid has been making its rounds on the Instagram accounts of tourists visiting Cambodia. Sought after for its novelty and peculiar taste, the local delicacy has become a coveted treat and familiar offering on the menus of restaurants and pubs, as well as street vendors in Siem Reap and Phnom Penh.

When the then Indonesian President, Susilo Bambang Yudhyono, was presented with two maps of the country’s primary forests by different government agencies at a cabinet meeting in December 2010 on ongoing REDD+ work, it became clear that the spatial data presented was conflicting.

In April, thousands of green ribbon-wearing protestors took to the streets of Bangkok, as well as the northern city of Chiang Mai and other towns around Thailand, in one of the largest civil rallies the ASEAN member state has seen since General Prayut Chan-o-cha's military junta wrested control of the nation from a caretaker government led by former Prime Minister Niwatthamrong Boonsongpaisan in 2014.At first glance, these demonstrators – who staged their protests despite a ban on public

Late last month, Indonesia saw the return of its infamous forest fires that occur each year producing toxic, choking smog in the form of haze as the rainy season trails off. The fires this time have broken out in the four provinces of South Sumatra, Riau, West Kalimantan and Central Kalimantan. Twenty-three of the 90 hotspots recorded across the country were in West Kalimantan, where thick smoke blanketed the provincial capital Pontianak and disrupted flights.

The Indonesian government is confident it can halve the number of forest fires in the country by 2019 after unveiling an ambitious plan recently.

A new species of orangutan has been discovered in the remote jungles of Indonesia, immediately becoming the world's most endangered great ape, researchers said Thursday."It's the first declaration of a new great ape species in about 100 years," Ian Singleton, co-author of the study and director of the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme, told AFP.

Southeast Asian nations have become increasingly concerned over environmental issues in recent years as the region has become more polluted due to rapid urbanisation and deforestation. As a whole, the region has to deal with transboundary haze pollution, depletion of natural resources and urban environmental degradation.

Southeast Asia is known for its vast rainforests which constitute about almost 20 percent of forest cover with the richest biodiversity in the world. What the region is also known for is its alarming rate of deforestation. The region has the highest rate of deforestation of any major tropical region followed by Latin America and Africa.