Environment and natural resources

Relentless floodwater in Banteay Meanchey has killed at least seven people since late last month, when water began inundating the province, national disaster officials confirmed. Fatalities from the deluge in Banteay Meanchey include four adults and three children, National Committee for Disaster Management chief Keo Vy ...

Sand-dredging boats were active along the Mekong River in Phnom Penh’s Meanchey district on Tuesday, despite the city’s municipal governor, Pa Socheatvong, having ordered a complete suspension of dredging in the city the day before. Phnom Penh City Hall on Monday put in place the temporary ...

Phnom Penh municipal governor Pa Socheatvong has ordered a complete suspension of all sand-dredging activities while the municipality investigates whether the companies are operating illegally, a spokesman said. The order came during a meeting yesterday between the governor and his subordinates, City Hall spokesman Long Dimanche ...

Police seized about 600 pieces of luxury-grade rosewood weighing about 2,000 kilograms during a raid in Oddar Meanchey province on Sunday, but are still deciding whether to arrest the owners of the property on which it was found, an official said. Bun Heng, a communal forestry ...

Flash floods have been hitting some parts of three provinces in Cambodia and have claimed seven lives so far, officials said Monday. Keo Vy, chief of the Cabinet of National Committee for Disaster Management (NCDM), said northwestern Banteay Meanchey and Preah Vihear provinces as well as ...

Phnom Penh municipality and the Cambodian Red Cross (CRC) on Sunday donated money and food rations to 176 families from Borei Keila—where thousands of people have been violently evicted from their homes in recent years after the land was sold to a private company. Phnom Penh ...

On May 16, immediately after the ceiling of a shoe factory collapsed in Kompong Speu province, leaving two people dead, promises were made to prosecute those responsible for the tragedy and to conduct a nationwide in­spection of all factories. “We will have a committee investigate clearly ...

Following an investigation of alleged illegal logging by Vietnamese Company 72 in Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadav district forests yesterday morning, provincial Forestry Administration officials claimed nothing seemed awry. Four villagers patrolling the forest at the border of Vietnam reported they had seen six Vietnamese loggers with two tractors, ...

A tropical storm that raked Vietnam for the past two days has affected five Cambodian provinces, with severe flooding and damage in three of them. Tropical storm Mangkhut descended on Northern Vietnam on Wednesday and yesterday, deluging the Mekong River and flooding areas of Banteay Meanchey, ...

At least 20,000 tourists and travellers will participate in the so-called “sea festival” at the end of this year, officials at the Kep province tourism department said. The two-day event, which started in 2011 as a tourism booster for the country’s coasts and beaches, was cancelled ...

Villagers in Kandal province have instigated a turf war over a private company they accuse of illegally pumping sand out of Koh Prak River. Fearing riverbank erosion could damage the surrounding community, about 100 residents of Koh Prak village in Kien Svay district’s Phoum Thom commune ...

Hundereds of families have been evacuated from their homes in Banteay Meanchey province, with about 1,000 more refusing to leave, despite water that is chest-deep in some areas due to Mekong River flooding. The evacuation of more than 500 families began late last week, as heavy ...

Employees reportedly working for the controversial Company 72 have allegedly been illegally felling timber in a community forest in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadav district and shipping it across the Vietnamese border, community members and Adhoc said yesterday. Romas Svat, a community representative in Paknhai commune’s Lom village, ...

More than 140 NGOs have called on the Mekong River Commission to freeze all hydropower damn construction in the Lower Mekong River. “The degration of fish production in the river can’t be replaced and the blockage of sediment will affect the fisheries resources in the river’s ...

Hundreds of hectares of farmland have been inundated by the rain-swollen Mekong River in Kratie province’s Bos Leav commune since late last week, officials said yesterday. Bos Leav commune chief Nai Khhy said seven of the commune’s eight villages are flooded affecting more than 800 ...

People living along the banks of the Mekong, Bassac and Tonle Sap rivers should exercise caution in the coming days, and be particularly aware of possible riverbank collapses as water levels are rising in Stung Treng province and elsewhere in the country, Prime Minister Hun ...

Residents living in the Mekong River basin are expressing concerns over water degradation in the Mekong river and its impact on farming, aquaculture and the livelihood of the millions of people who live in the region. People from Cambodia, Thailand and Viet Nam’s Cuu Long (Mekong) ...

Cambodia’s Ministry of Water Resources and Meteorology on Tuesday warned people not to travel by sea from August 3-5 because the country would suffer from the impact of a storm and cause torrential rain. The ministry’s statement said according to the forecast, a depression on the ...

Thousands of people have been evicted from their homes to make way for a Chinese development in Koh Kong province. But some of the families have returned to their land, leaving a relocation site they say was insufficient for their needs. For families like those of ...

Thousands of villagers in a remote district of the coastal province of Koh Kong have been evicted or are facing eviction in the face of a Chinese resort development project. Some families have moved unwillingly to relocation sites. But others are refusing to leave, setting the ...

Cambodia’s manufacturing and tourism sectors will face adverse effects from climate change due to the country’s focus on hydropower, according to a report produced jointly by British and Cambodian think tanks. ...

A weather forecast predicting heavy rain in the next five days is causing some trepidation among election monitors, who fear flooding might keep some voters from the polls. Minister of Water Resources and Meteorology Lim Kean Hor issued a warning Monday that a low-pressure system hitting ...

Business is booming on Koh Pich. Since development began in 2006—and about 300 families were pushed off what was then farmland—the island has slowly grown into the symbol of commercial modernity in Phnom Penh. The developer, Overseas Cam­bodia Investment Corp., is also extending the island by ...

Prior to 2009, Kong Channa, a rice farmer from Svay Rieng province, would leave his wife and young child for months at a time in neighbouring provinces to supplement his income in the off season. This all changed, though, when he began working with the Cambodian ...