A coal power plant set up in the Tharparkar desert by Engro Powergen Thar Private Limited. Part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, it was completed just before China announced it would stop financing overseas coal projects. (Image: Sindh Engro Coal Mining Company)

China’s coal exit will not end Pakistan’s reliance on dirty fuel

Pakistan will continue to develop under-construction coal plants and even turn to highly polluting local sources of the fossil fuel

Nepal’s climate action plan: progressive on paper only

Updated Nationally Determined Contribution set out plans to reduce emissions and electrify railways, but the gap between ambition and implementation is growing

India announces net-zero target at start of COP26 summit

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s commitment for India to be net zero by 2070 at the World Leaders Summit raises hope for success at COP26

Afghanishtan: Winter is coming

South Asia faces a perfect storm with the growing risk of an unstable Afghanistan, coupled with divided views in the international community on who must take responsibility for the strategic rubble of the American exit from the country

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Who owns groundwater in water-stressed Pakistan?

Pakistan ranks fourth in the world in terms of annual groundwater abstraction – the amount of water taken from an underground source

Can neutral status protect Afghanistan from foreign interference?

Afghanistan, a non-aligned country, was a founder of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in Belgrade, the capital of the former country Yugoslavia in 1961

Why are bees dying en masse in Bhutan?

There is a Nepali saying, “Wise action is the fruit of life, wise discourse is the pollination.” This was one of the many things about pollination that Sonam Dorji, from Bhutan’s central district of Bumthang, heard from his grandparents

Bangladeshi workers stranded in Vietnam on false promises

As trafficking of Bangladeshis to Vietnam came to the fore after 27 stranded nationals demonstrated in Hanoi last week, 15 others are crying out to be rescued from the Southeast Asian country

A tale of misplaced priorities

It's mind-boggling to think of a situation where there is an urgency, poor people are in dire need, and money is in the hands of the government allocated to help those in need, but the money is not being distributed properly

Sending international students home would sap US influence and hurt the economy

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, made a decision on July 6 regarding international students in the U.S. that will affect far more than just the roughly 870,000 international students themselves

They must end this senseless violence now

Canada and Australia join others in the international community in condemning the escalation of violence across Afghanistan

India-Bangladesh expanded river trade opens up opportunities for locals

India and Bangladesh recently signed the second addendum to the Protocol of Inland Water Transit and Trade (PIWTT) at the end of May, a step welcomed by traders in both countries

Shift focus to the maritime domain

Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi’s speech in Ladakh on July 3, where he addressed Indian Army personnel and commended them for their professionalism and valour, even while asserting that the “era of expansionism is over”, marks the beginning of a definitive reset in the troubled but the, up to now, violence-free India-China relationship

Let Galwan Valley attack be the Operation Barbarossa for China

Right now, China is in a similar situation as Hitler’s Germany in the late 1930s, while the US is in a similar situation as the declining British and French Empires

Right climate for India-China talks on climate change

One of the casualties of the strain in relations between India and China will be the cooperation between the two of the world’s most populous countries on the climate crisis

Afghanistan’s right of access and transit under international law

According to international law, land-locked countries, such as Afghanistan, have the “right of access”  to sea portsand “freedom of transit through the territory of transit states.”

Muddy rain in Kathmandu highlights wider climate disturbance

On June 15, 2018, residents of Kathmandu were caught by surprise as dark clouds gathered over the city. The clouds soon led to rain

China and India's deadly Himalayan clash is a big test for Modi. And a big concern for the world

Sometime on Monday, an Indian army patrol skirmished with Chinese troops in the Galwan River Valley, high in the Himalayas.

Cyclones batter South Asia as Indian Ocean heats up

Nisarga, the first cyclone to have threatened Mumbai in more than 70 years, has left India’s financial capital largely unharmed after it made landfall in the nearby beach town of Alibaug on June 3