Agriculture

Cambodia’s opposition leader called Wednesday for a halt to land concessions granted by the government to foreign companies in the country’s vast Prey Lang Forest, calling for greater protection of one of Southeast Asia’s last remaining lowland evergreen woodlands. Cambodia National Rescue Party President Sam ...

LUMPHAT WILDLIFE SANCTUARY, Ratanakkiri Province – From behind the corrugated metal walls of Daun Penh Agrico’s wood depot, the raspy buzz of a chainsaw rattled through the surrounding forest on Monday afternoon. As the chainsaw revved and cut, a heavy-duty truck packed full of long, sawn ...

Kampong Cham police officials arrested 10 suspects on Sunday for illegally fishing the Mekong River in Koh Sotin district. “Seven are Vietnamese and other three are Muslim Cambodians. They used illegal equipment to fish in the Mekong River, such as four motor boats, trawls and two ...

Some 1,200 hectares of flooded mangrove forest in two communes of Kampong Cham province have been bulldozed and filled in, robbing more than 700 families of the long-standing source of their livelihood, villagers there said yesterday. Villagers in Tuol Snuol commune in Kroch Chhmar district and ...

An indigenous Bunong minority community in Mondolkiri province’s Keo Seima district on Wednesday filed a complaint claiming that authorities had destroyed their homes, but authorities allege that the villagers are living on land owned by a private company. Villagers claim that since November, 37 homes in ...

Thirty-four delegates from the Rice Merchants’ Association of Hong Kong made their first visit to Cambodia on Wednesday to explore more opportunities in the local milled rice sector. David Van, deputy secretary general of the Alliance of Rice Producers and Exporters of Cambodia, said the point ...

US and Cambodian governments have presented a united front calling for the country’s agriculture industry to diversify, modernise and commercialise. US ambassador William E Todd and the Cambodia’s Deputy Prime Minister and Chairman of the Council for Agricultural and Rural Development Yim Chhay Ly led an ...

Well-known timber magnate Try Pheap is preparing to expand cross-country with a scheme that already gives him exclusive rights to buy all the wood felled on economic land concessions (ELCs) in Ratanakkiri province, a spokesman for the businessman said. The Agriculture Ministry’s Forestry Administration in February ...

Global Witness, a United Kingdom-based NGO, has alleged that Deutsche Bank has dropped the majority of its holdings in a Vietnamese company that operates rubber plantations in Cambodia, amid accusations the firm is involved in land grabbing and illegal logging. In a statement released today, Global ...

Banteay Meanchey province’s former governor got a surprise Monday when he attended a ceremony in Phnom Penh expecting to receive a donation of 200 power tillers from Chinese officials, but received eight small water pumps instead. Former Banteay Meanchey governor Oung Oeun and the governor ...

Villagers embroiled in a longstanding land dispute with a Chinese rubber company in Ratanakkiri’s O’Chum district received an official eviction notice last week from local authorities who failed to promise compensation, community representatives told the Post yesterday. More than 100 families will have to move so Swift Rubber ...

China’s Yunnan province on Monday provided 200 agricultural engines to Cambodia’s northwestern Banteay Meanchey province for post-flood rehabilitation. A handover ceremony was held here between Yu Dingcheng, vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the Yunnan Provincial People ‘s Congress, and Oung Oeun, chief of the ...

Stung Treng Provincial Court yesterday questioned six men apprehended while allegedly transporting more than 17 cubic metres of illegal Thnong timber by boat in Sesan district, said Y Ek Savtey, director of the provincial forestry administration. Hou Sam Ol, a provincial coordinator with rights group Adhoc, ...

China’s Yunnan province on Monday provided 200 agricultural engines to Cambodia’s northwestern Banteay Meanchey province for post-flood rehabilitation. A handover ceremony was held here between Yu Dingcheng, vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the Yunnan Provincial People ‘s Congress, and Oung Oeun, chief of the ...

Cambodia’s cultural Siem Reap province and China’s eastern Jiangxi province have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to strengthen cooperation in a number of fields, according to a copy of the MoU on Saturday. The deal was inked on Friday afternoon between Khim Bunsong, governor of ...

Local watchdog groups say they have been forced to take forest protection into their hands, due to a failure of government to do so. “As we have seen: the National Assembly, the Senate and the government do not work,” Ouch Leng, head of the Cambodian Human ...

A US-based group of lawyers has launched an online campaign to raise funding to support a lawsuit against a UK company that bought sugar from a Cambodian plantations linked to human rights abuses. The campaign is being undertaken by the International Senior Lawyers Project, which is ...

A district-level Environment Ministry official on Thursday retracted comments he made last week when he claimed proper monitoring of logging inside Ratanakkiri province’s Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary was impossible because his ministry did not know the boundaries of private land concessions in the protected zone. On November ...

A private agro-industrial company has come under fire from villagers in Ratanakkiri province who say it has illegally felled resin-producing trees that are their main source of income. More than 1,000 trees in the Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary in Ratanakkiri’s Lumphat district are under threat, the villagers ...

Former Environment Minister Mok Mareth on Tuesday accused the media of having “twisted the truth” in reporting on illegal logging in Ratanakkiri province, where rights groups and independent forestry monitors say the natural environment is being pillaged and ethnic minority communities impoverished by illegal loggers ...

Local communities that lost their land via economic land concessions to private companies are now being paid by those same firms to illegally fell the trees that once sustained their livelihoods, a group of five advocacy groups contended yesterday. At a press conference, the NGOs singled ...

Investors in drinks giant PepsiCo have filed a shareholders resolution urging the company to account for alleged land-rights violations in Cambodia. The 14 shareholders – including Oxfam – are increasing the pressure on PepsiCo following Coca-Cola’s pledge earlier this month of “zero tolerance” towards land grabs. An ...

Nearly 70 representatives from 278 families in Preah Vihear’s Rovieng district are seeking intervention after a national mining company began drilling on their farmland last week, locals said yesterday. According to villager Yean Bunchan, 47, representatives from a company based in Kandal province called T P ...

Villagers and local authorities continued to argue over a 4-hectare plot of land in Phnom Penh’s Russei Keo district on Monday, a day after officials promised to measure and issue a title for it. District council chief Prak Channa on Sunday promised to issue a land ...