On Son Island in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, Le Trung Tin scatters fish feed into his ponds, where dozens of snakehead fish leap through the surface in synchronised bursts. “I taught them how to do that,” he says proudly, tossing another handful of feed at his fish.

The scene looks idyllic, but Le’s fish farm is a reluctant response to an escalating crisis. For decades, he made his living fishing the Hau River, a distributary of the Mekong. But in recent years, plastic waste clogged his nets and strangled the fish. “I had no choice but to stop,” he says. “Everything was tangled – trash, nets, even the fish themselves. It was hopeless.”

Indonesia is the world’s largest producer and exporter of palm oil, an ingredient used globally in a huge variety of food and household products from peanut butter to shampoo. Yet it is also an important driver of deforestation and contributor to climate change and biodiversity loss. Over the past 20 years, the expansion of palm oil plantations has contributed one-third of the total loss of old-growth forests in Indonesia (around 3 million hectares).

The Mahakam River flows for 900 km from the highlands of central Borneo through thick rainforest before fanning into a lush delta that feeds the Makassar Strait. Once dense with mangroves and palms, the wetland islands protected coastal communities, supported biodiversity and served as a significant carbon sink.

However, in the 1980s, shrimp ponds began replacing the mangroves. By 2020, around half of the delta’s forests were lost due to weak regulatory enforcement and inadequate environmental protection. This large-scale deforestation increased the area’s vulnerability to climate change.

In spring 2024, I travelled in the Mekong Delta with Vietnamese researchers to investigate the country’s dwindling mangroves. 

One day while hiking along the coastline of Bac Liu Province in southern Vietnam, we came across the remains of a once-flourishing mangrove forest now littered by countless concrete blocks. My colleagues noted that the decades-long trend of disappearing mangroves here seemed to be unstoppable. 

While standing on the banks of the Mahakam River in Samarinda on the island of Borneo, I watched an unending parade of coal barges sail slowly down the river. I was here in East Kalimantan to give a presentation at the Vulnerable Deltas Workshop—a joint project of the East-West Center and the Wilson Center’s China Environment Forum.

In the last months of 2023, 30 landfills caught fire in Indonesia, highlighting a dangerous health risk and a symptom of the country’s failing waste management system. Most of these landfills are overflowing open dump sites. Moreover, not all waste ends up here, as large amounts — particularly low-value plastics like sachets and pouches — are never collected. Indonesia ranks among the top 10 global plastic polluters. The country generates 7.8 million tons of plastic waste annually, 63% of which is mismanaged. Most of these mismanaged plastics are thrown into rivers, dump sites or burnt by individuals, releasing toxic substances into the air. 

Each spring, as Shenzhen’s mangroves burst into life, the region becomes a prime spot for birdwatchers observing the endangered, black-faced spoonbill. Known as the giant panda of birds, this species winters in Shenzhen Bay from October to April, in preparation for its northbound migration. Shenzhen Bay, located in southern China and part of the Pearl River Delta expanding into Hong Kong, is a crucial stop-off point for migratory birds using the East Asian-Australasian flyway. The mangroves support over 200 species of birds and host 100,000 migratory birds each winter, drawing enthusiasts and scientists alike to witness these natural spectacles against the backdrop of one of China’s most bustling urban settings.

During the World Wildlife Fund’s Plastic Policy Summit in March in Washington D.C., I grabbed coffee in a white ceramic mug provided by the convention venue. Reusable mugs seemed unusual amid today’s prevalence of single-use cups, prompting me to reflect on how we have normalized single-use: I bought yogurt and soda in returnable bottles in Beijing; generations before us grew up with reuse. Why did we move away from it?