Thursday 03 October, 2002
Living on the margins: can anyone save East Asia's environment?
The Johannesburg earth summit posed a question of profound importance: can you lift the mass of the world's poor out of destitution without destroying what's left of the environment? This question is an urgent one for East Asia, where decades of rapid economic growth have laid waste to the region's rich and fragile eco-systems. In a series of landmark reports, East Asia Today visited communities across the region where life is a daily struggle for survival amid dwindling resources.
Global warming is more than a scientific debate for the Tuvalu islanders in the South Pacific: they're already sinking and no-one seems to care. Angie Knox reports.
Taiwan's Orchid Island is home to the aboriginal Tao people - it's also a store for thousands of barrels of nuclear waste. The Tao say it's making them sick, but where else can it go? Helen Leavey reports on the waste that nobody wants.
The Indonesian island of Sumatra boasts forests with the highest level of biodiveristy in the world. But they're disappearing at an unprecedented rate. Richard Galpin reports on the battle to save the forests from a lethal combination of impoverished illegal loggers and powerful businesses.
Across East Asia, coral reefs that provide habitat for thousands of species of marine life are being poisoned with cyanide or blown up with dynamite. The reason? Fish stocks are so low, it's the only way to catch them. Orlando de Guzman takes to the sea with the migrant fishermen of Palawan, in the south-western Philippines.
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