Environment

What Happened: Chinese state-owned miner MMG has proposed a tailings dam in northwest Tasmania, which will allow it to continue operating the Rosebery mine. The zinc and copper mine is a major local employer, and MMG says it will follow all regulatory requirements for new construction. However, the proposed dam is within Takayna, a region of immense ecological, cultural, and spiritual significance to Tasmanian Aboriginal communities. Ecologists say construction would involve clear-cutting one of Earth’s last expanses of temperate rainforest.

Our Focus: “MMG’s proposed tailings dam would permanently destroy a pristine section of rainforest,” Charley Gros, a forest ecologist with the Bob Brown Foundation (BBF), told The Diplomat. He also warned that such dams frequently leak toxic minerals, which could cause “irreversible ecological collapse.” The project has not yet been approved, but the Tasmanian government defended its potential: “Few other places can match Tasmania’s ability to produce ‘green,’ low carbon-intensive metals,” said Tasmanian Minister for Business, Industry, and Resources Eric Abetz. Meanwhile, locals are torn between the spiritual significance of the rainforest and the need for the jobs provided by MMG.

What Comes Next: MMG’s involvement has sparked extra scrutiny of the dam. “MMG is a company with a track record of environmental destruction. We’re seeing it unfold here right now,” said Jenny Weber, BBF’s campaign manager. However, the problem is bigger than one Chinese firm. The struggle for Takayna is emblematic of global battles in the Amazon, the Congo, and Southeast Asia, where industrial development – ironically, often in the name of the green transition – collides with Indigenous sovereignty and irreplaceable ecosystems.

INTERVIEW

Karen Hao, a tech-focused journalist and the author of “Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI,” on how U.S. AI companies use the “China card” to avoid regulation and scrutiny: “Not only do they compete with each other under the idea that they are the superior empire, they often deliberately evoke China as the evil empire to justify their continued consolidation of labor, talent, and intellectual property.”

Northeast Asia

China’s navy has been unusually active so far this year. In May, two of its aircraft carriers conducted simultaneous landing and takeoff operations in separate maritime zones contested with neighboring Japan and South Korea. So far in June, the PLAN has set two new precedents : sending an aircraft carrier across the Second Island Chain and having two carriers in the Western Pacific at the same time. For Japan especially, the developments mark the growing capability – and threat – of the Chinese navy.

South Asia

In Nepal’s long-standing battle against corruption, accountability is typically limited to low-level functionaries – the suspected involvement of higher-ups, including prime ministers, goes uninvestigated. However, in a landmark development, the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) filed a corruption case against former PM Madhav Kumar Nepal. The case has the potential to set a precedent for accountability – but critics say it’s just an example of political persecution, as Madhav Kumar Nepal is a long-standing rivel of current PM K.P. Sharma Oli

Southeast Asia

Thailand and Cambodia this week agreed to withdraw their troops to previously agreed lines along their disputed border in a bid to reduce tensions after a deadly clash in late May. The outbreak of fighting left one Cambodian soldier dead and led both nations to reinforce their military presence at sections along their 800-kilometer shared border. The Thailand-Cambodia border has been a subject of periodic bilateral tensions for decades; Cambodia says that it intends to ask for the International Court of Justice to rule on several disputed areas, hoping for a “fair, impartial, and durable resolution.” Under pressure from nationalist activists, Thailand’s government has rejected the notion, arguing that the two nations should solve the crisis bilaterally, via the Joint Border Commission, which is due to meet later this week.

Central Asia

This week, new immigration restrictions went into effect in the United States, banning entry of citizens from a dozen countries (including Afghanistan and Myanmar) and partially restricting the entrance of those from seven more, including Turkmenistan. The Turkmen Foreign Ministry expressed concern after the ban went into effect, calling the decision a “hasty step.” While Turkmenistan’s rate of visa overstayers is relatively high in percentage terms, it amounted to just 142 individuals in 2023.

A view of Kyrgyzstan’s Ala-Archa National Park shows one of many construction zones that critics say threaten the fragile ecosystem.

Environment

Ogtsrokh amarakh, Mongolian for “resignation is easy,” a catchphrase of the youth protests that forced Mongolia’s prime minister from office last week.