Asia

Nine years after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, fundamental issues remain unresolved. Many domestic critics saw the Olympics as a ploy to distract from the nuclear disaster. Should a country with an ongoing nuclear disaster be hosting these games?

While the answer to when, and if, the post-COVID era will come remains uncertain, it is clear that sustainability is back in centre stage - no longer as the hip slogan of the 90s - but as a survival need.

From protecting ‘nature’ to supporting kin. The animistic turn in sustainability.

Jharkhand, India: thousand year old rock- and wall paintings, green jungles and streets, blackened by coal dust, old lifestyles and their loss. „The one-eared elephant from Hazaribagh“ is a portrait of two outstanding artists on a journey into the world of their art and existence. Today they struggle to resist the destructive forces from open cast coal mining.

The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the integration of technology into our daily lives. This article series examines how digital technology affects innovation, inclusion, digital rights, and democracy in different countries.

Dara(*) is an edjai, the local term in Khmer language to designate a street waste picker. In a country lacking a formal recycling system, he is one of the many thousands roaming the streets in search for aluminum cans or plastic bottles he can find to sell to collectors, composing the backbone of the recycling ecosystem.

The SARS pandemic in 2003 still lives vividly in the memory of Hongkongs citizens. Therefore, the Hongkongers responded quickly when the first cases of COVID-19 appeared. What did the city learned about crisis management? Which impact did the collective memory has regarding the virus spreading?

In its fight against the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, India is facing its greatest social and economic challenge since independence in 1947. Persisting political and social contradictions have become more visible than ever before.

With low testing rates, but rising numbers of infections, Myanmar’s government is virtually flying blind trying to get on top of Covid-19 with a lockdown. The collapse of clothing exports to Europe has led to a sharp rise in unemployment, while armed conflicts continue, mostly in Rakhine State, and critical coverage of it has become a criminal offence.

A virus riding on another virus. That is how the ‘infodemic’ is raging in online spaces around the outbreak of the novel coronavirus called COVID-19, which has been on just about everyone’s radar since late January 2020. As grave as the quest to manage the respiratory disease and cure those ill with it is not only the challenge of using facts versus fear - but how to create and keep avenues of information that withstand the unrelenting drip of skewed, confused, partially true to totally false information, to racist and prejudiced views, or a cocktail of these.