CGSEA

CGSEA Research Fellow Yingshan Lau co-facilitated a Learning Journey on Carbon Project Development and MRV at Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve, organised by the NUS Sustainability Academy as part of a Singapore Cooperation Enterprise capacity-building programme, on 21 April 2026.

CGSEA Research Fellow Yingshan Lau presented a talk on "The importance of humanistic participatory MRV and carbon credit literacy" for a workshop on Carbon Credit Supply Chain, Value Added and Watershed Co-governance Strategies, organised by the Institute for Development Consultancy (CODE) in Hanoi, Vietnam, on 6 April 2026.

CGSEA Research Fellow Saritha Kittie Uda conducted fieldwork in Jakarta and Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, from 20 April-3 May 2026. Her study involved 24 interviews and four focus group discussions held across three villages and in Palangka Raya city.

Uda's research focuses on transboundary peatland governance, with respondents representing national, provincial, and regency/municipal government agencies, heads of villages and community-based groups, academics, private actors, and local and international NGOs.

CGSEA PhD Candidate Yustina Octifanny conducted her fieldwork on peatland carbon projects in three villages across Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, from 25 August 2025-February 26 2026, concluding with community workshops where she shared her research findings and sought feedback from local communities.

She also conducted carbon market literacy sessions addressing questions raised by community members, including questions about carbon markets, the rights and responsibilities of local communities, and how carbon markets may benefit them.

Following the carbon market literacy sessions, community members were asked to write down and share the ongoing socio-environmental issues faced by their communities, the benefits they expect to receive from carbon markets, and their aspirations for peatland conservation.

CGSEA Research Fellow Yingshan Lau, Khamsing Keothoumma from the National University of Laos, CGSEA PhD Candidate Yunrui Ren and Collaborator Sithong Thongmanivong co-authored a short article for ARIScope on ‘The case of the unsold carbon credits: Lessons from an early-REDD+ project in Southern Laos.’

The authors explore the case of Xe Pian National Park in southern Laos, one of Southeast Asia’s key biodiversity hotspots, once seen as a promising model for forest-based climate finance. The Xe Pian REDD+ project aimed to fund conservation and local livelihoods through carbon credits. Launched in 2010 and registered under Verra’s Verfied Carbon Standard in 2014, the project built technical capacity, involved local communities, and verified more than 130,000 tonnes of tradeable carbon credits in 2018. But none of those credits were ever issued or sold.

The article argues this failure was not due to weak effort on the ground, but deeper structural problems: unclear responsibility for selling credits, lack of funds for issuance, weak institutional continuity, and limited understanding of the full carbon credit process. Meanwhile, underfunding, renewed forest encroachment, and the economic fallout from Covid-19 increased pressure on both the park and nearby communities. Xe Pian shows how forest carbon projects can falter without strong governance, financing, and follow-through.

The case of the unsold carbon credits: Lessons from an early-REDD+ project in Southern Laos » Asia Research Institute, NUS The case of the unsold carbon credits: Lessons from an early-REDD+ project in Southern Laos23 April 2026By Yingshan Lau, Khamsing Keothoumma, Yunrui Ren, Sithong Thongmanivongcarbon credit value chainForest conservationinstitutional changeinter-scalar governanceLaosvertical coordination Located in C...

CGSEA Collaborator Danny Marks and Ian Baird have had their article, titled 'Hidden Smoke: Air Pollution, Agrarian Change, and Governance Gaps in Luang Prabang, Laos', published in Critical Asian Studies.

Marks and Baird analyse the drivers, lived experiences, and governance of air pollution in Luang Prabang, Laos’ premier tourist destination and a UNESCO World Heritage city, challenging dominant policy narratives that attribute haze primarily to traditional swidden cultivation.

They argue, instead, that commercial agrarian change, particularly cassava expansion, grass cultivation, and cattle pasture expansion linked to regional and Chinese cattle demand and a prolonged urban landfill fire, drove air pollution in 2023. They find that these sources stem from labor shortages, economic insecurity, poor urban waste planning, and a reliance on fire as a low-cost management tool, and that, despite significant health, livelihood, and tourism impacts, haze remains underappreciated and underfunded.

The authors conclude that, in Laos, weak monitoring infrastructure, fragmented institutional responsibilities, and the absence of disaggregated health data render air pollution uncertain and socially normalized.

Hidden Smoke: Air Pollution, Agrarian Change, and Governance Gaps in Luang Prabang, Laos Air pollution has emerged as a major public health and economic threat in Southeast Asia, yet Laos has received limited attention in scholarly and policy debates despite significant mortality and e...

CGSEA researchers Michelle Miller and Jay Quevedo undertook fieldwork in Trang Province, Thailand, from 22–28 March 2026. They conducted 15 interviews on seagrass governance in the reigon, including with representatives from provincial and municipal-level government agencies, heads of villages and community-based groups, academics, private actors, and local and international NGOs.

To learn more about our work on Coastal and Freshwater Ecosystems, please visit: https://cgsea.org/coastal-and-freshwater-ecosystems/

Happy World Seagrass Day from CGSEA! 🌱

Our project's team working on Coastal and Freshwater Ecosystems conducts research on the important and diverse ecosystem services provided by seagrasses around Southeast Asia.

To learn more about our work, please visit: https://cgsea.org/coastal-and-freshwater-ecosystems/

🌟 Yunrui Ren, a PhD Candidate at NUS Geography, attached to the CGSEA grant, has had a busy March, presenting at the Annual Meetings of both the Association for Asian Studies, Inc. (AAS) and American Association of Geographers on 13 and 19 March respectively.

For AAS 2026, Yunrui delivered a talk titled "Governing the Forest Carbon Through Market-Based Mechanisms: Policy Design and Framework Development in the Lao PDR", in-person in Vancouver, presenting snippets from her PhD fieldwork in Laos from July-December 2025. For AAG 2026, Yunrui shared a specific thread of her ongoing work, reflecting on the "Financialization of forest carbon: Financial instruments, infrastructures, and governance", online.

Ren's work is part of CGSEA's work package on Terrestrial Forests, and studies the challenges and insights arising from the deployment of market-based mechanisms for forest carbon governance in Laos.

To learn more about CGSEA's work on Terrestrial Forests, please visit: https://cgsea.org/terrestrial-forests/

Happy World Forest Day from CGSEA!🌲

Forests are essential for life on Earth, supplying oxygen, shelter, food, water & fuel. As vital engines in a sustainable bioeconomy, forests provide forestry-related jobs, support agriculture, & protect the health of watersheds.

The CGSEA team respects the important role that Indigenous Peoples & local communities play in stewarding the world's intact forests, as we investigate how forests in Southeast Asia are used as instruments for mitigating climate change, & the sociopolitical issues associated with this.

Our preliminary analyses reveal a dynamic setting of institutional capacity-building & legislative reviews, as actors in the region negotiate how engaging with carbon markets can be done in ways that benefit Indigenous Peoples and local communities.

To learn more about CGSEA's work on Terrestrial Forests, click here: https://cgsea.org/terrestrial-forests/