What are the major environmental issues confronting Southeast Asia? How serious are they, and what steps have been taken to deal with them?

What will be an ideal response?


The most pressing environmental problems in the region are deforestation, as well as fire, smoke, and air pollution. The most serious problem is deforestation, where as much as 50% of forests have been cut in Thailand. The major effort to alleviate this problem has been to allow forested areas to regrow. Drought and logging practices lead to wildfires which created severe air pollution in the late 1990s. Some of the incidences that occurred due to the air pollution were a commercial airliner crash and respiratory problems from hundreds of thousands of people admitted to hospitals during this time period. Air pollution is also attributed to industrial development. Efforts to reduce air pollution include multiple cities building rail-based public transportation systems to reduce vehicular emissions.

Environmental & Atmospheric Sciences

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Answer the following statement true (T) or false (F)

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Environmental & Atmospheric Sciences