“I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris,” U.S. President Donald Trump declared during a speech announcing his decision to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement.
In so doing, Trump sent a message to the world: that his administration — as promised during his campaign — was putting America first, and prioritizing American economic prosperity over everything, including the collective environmental preservation efforts of nearly the entire planet.
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“I think probably the largest impact on Cambodia’s environment [resulting] from a shift towards China would be… the lack of transparency surrounding projects,” said Courtney Weatherby, a Research Analyst with the Southeast Asia program at the Stimson Center, an international peace and security think tank based in Washington, D.C. “One of the benefits of engaging with either Western countries, or Western investors, is that they tend to have higher standards — environmental and social standards in particular — and they have a more transparent way of operating that allows improvement through critique.
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