Originally the home of the indigenous Ati people, Boracay was a sleepy agricultural island with a population of 100 that lived on rice cultivation and fishing, supplemented by goat farming. Part of the Aklan province in the Philippines, the island first started to receive intraregional migration from other nearby islands in the 1900s, leading to transformation of more land into farms for coconut and fruit trees. With continued migration, the island's population grew.

Tioman Island on the east coast of Malaysia first appeared on the world’s radar after its beaches were depicted in the 1958 movie South Pacific as ‘Bali Hai’. In the 1970s, the island was named by Time magazine as one of the world’s most beautiful islands. Since then, the island’s tourism industry has grown by leaps and bounds. Like many other small islands, the dwellers there have always faced a water shortage.

With the Asian Games fast approaching, scheduled to be held from 18 August to 2 September 2018, officials in the Indonesian capital where the games are going to be hosted are scrambling in an all-out effort to prepare the host cities. Sporting venues in the Indonesian cities of Jakarta, Palembang, Bandung, Bogor, Bekasi and Subang are receiving their final touches, concrete river banks are being painted, building works are nearing completion and traffic congestion is being addressed.

China has been the world's largest importer of recyclable materials since the 1980s. In 2017, China's Ministry of Ecology and Environment announced an import ban of 24 types of solid waste (later updated to 32 types) including unsorted wastepaper, textiles and plastics. The secondary raw material harvested from the imported waste is expected to be replaced by domestic resources.

Indonesia has a major plastic waste problem on its hands. At the moment, the country is second only to China when it comes to dumping plastic waste into the world’s oceans. According to a Study by the University of Georgia, an estimated 3.22 million metric tons of plastic waste is tossed annually into the ocean surrounding Indonesia, while another 8.82 million metric tons of China’s plastic waste also makes its way into the ocean.

A police raid on the Wai Mei Dat Thai Recycling factory, 100km east of Bangkok last month revealed a shocking find. The 40-acre complex was laden with huge piles of electronic waste – keyboards, motherboards, electrical wires, computer screens and smartphone batteries, just to name a few. The high-level operation found that undocumented immigrant workers from Lao PDR and Myanmar were used to recycle or discard the e-waste at the site.

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

What is the appropriate response to the threat of climate change? To some climate activists, it means we must give up on economic growth, capitalism or even industrial society itself. This extreme viewpoint, if correct, would require modern humanity to abandon much of what makes life comfortable and secure. It also causes many on the political right – and some in the centre – to suspect climate activism of being merely an excuse to end capitalism.

One of Southeast Asia’s main treasures is its beautiful flora and fauna. Gifted with lush forests and beautiful waters, the region is blessed with diverse wildlife. However, bit by bit, some of these natural wonders are being chipped away by the rapid modernisation that’s taken over the region. This, compounded by several other reasons have had an adverse effect on animals of different species such as the Malayan tiger and tapirs.

In a world that is fast moving towards urbanisation, environmental considerations are often pushed aside. The rapid pace at which buildings and other structures are constructed is impressive but a blatant disregard of the ecosystem at the expense of development must be done away with. Flora and fauna often fall victim to massive modernisation projects with more animals on the endangered list now than ever before.