Environment and natural resources

A local newspaper stringer who had written about illegal logging was found dead in the back of a car yesterday in Rattanakiri province’s O’Chum district. Hang Serei Oudom, 44, was a stringer for Vorakchun Khmer, or Khmer Hero, newspaper. Police said his body was covered in blood ...

There has been an ioncrease in fishing activity in the dolphin conservation zones along the Mekong River in Kratie and Stung Treng provinces, putting pressure on the critically endangered Mekong dolphin population, the chairman of the Commission for Mekong River Dolphin Conservation and Eco-tourism Development said yesterday. Touch ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court questioned a district governor from Kampong Thom province yesterday over his involvement  in clearing protected flooed forest in the province in July. Prim Rottha, Stong district governor, is one of about 20 officials who received court summonses in July over their suspected ...

Approximately 400 people from 10 villages in Kandal province’s Ang Snuol district stopped a truck on Monday that had been hired to fill in a pond in preparation for the reported building of a military police base, officials said. Thuon Nging, a representative of the ...

A Cambodian journalist, who reported on forest crimes in Ratanakkiri province for a little-known newspaper, was found murdered in the trunk of his car yesterday, police said. Hang Serei Odom, 42, a journalist at the Khmer-language Virakchun Khmer Daily, had been missing since Sunday, when he ...

After experiencing decades of floods, Cambodia’s microfinance institutions say they no longer have problems disbursing loans during the rainy season, according to the head of Cambodia’s Microfinance Association (CMA). A survey issued early this year by a coterie of international aid organisations, including Oxfam, Care, PACT ...

High-profile Phnom Penh businesswoman Chhin Sokountheary has called on Prime Minister Hun Sen to return 33 hectares of prime land in Phnom Penh’s Sen Sok district to her company, which lost the rights to it when the government claimed the land in July. Sokountheary said she ...

ASEAN senior officials on energy gathered here on Monday to discuss and prepare documents for the 30th ASEAN Ministers on Energy Meeting and related meetings to be held on Sept. 12. The two-day preparatory meeting, under the theme “ASEAN Green Connectivity”, was chaired by Tun ...

Sri Lanka’s Touchwood Investments PLC has acquired 11,138 hectares of land in Cambodia to set up an agricultural project to plant rubber and other crops. Chairman of the firm, Roscoe A. Maloney, says the acquisition done in the previous financial year is aimed at exploring the ...

Villagers in Kratie province have long feared the proposed Sambor hydroelectric dam and the impact it could have on their subsistence fishing and riverbank agriculture. According to Resilience on the Mekong: A Vulnerability and Adaptation Assessment in North-East Cambodia, a report released by the World Wildlife ...

Angkor Gold Corp has acquired a new economic land concession as it gains full control of its other concessions with the purchase of another mining company, according to officials. According to a statement released last week, Angkor Gold has purchased Liberty Mining International Pty Ltd (Liberty), ...

More than 250 families in Preah Vihear province’s Preah Vihear City were evacuated from their homes yesterday and moved to higher ground due to flooding caused by persistent heavy rains that started last week, the provincial governor said. Preah Vihear Governor Oum Mara siad that the ...

Villagers in Kratie province have long feared the proposed Sambor hydroelectric dam and the impact it could have on their subsistence fishing and riverbank agriculture. According to Resilience on the Mekong: A Vulnerability and Adaptation Assessment in North-East Cambodia, a report released by the World Wildlife Foundation on Friday, ...

China has done a lot to support Cambodia over the years, with millions of dollars in aid, loans and investment. But after reports last week that China has pledged another $500 million in soft loans and grants-and publicly thanked Cambodia for its support in Southeast ...

Despite so much excitement in the run-up to the inception of the Asean Economic Community (AEC) in 2015, experts and activists on human rights and democracy are ambivalent about what AEC’s repercussions will be on human rights and democracy. They have expressed concerns about AEC’s negative ...

With cargo traffic at the Phnom Penh Autonomus Port growing rapidly, a nearly completed container terminal just south of the city on the Mekon River should help ease the congestion. The 30-hectare port, in Kandal province’s Kein Svay district, was completed late last month, though cranes ...

The largest hydropower station on Lancang River in southwest China’s Yunnan Province — known as the Mekong River in southeast Asia — went into operation Thursday with its first power generating unit up and running. The Nuozhadu hydroelectric station, located in the city of Pu’er, is ...

ADB (Asian development bank) pledged to offer $55 million loan for infrastructure restoration from flood damage last year in Cambodia. At the same time, AusAid also offered 5.25 million US dollars, and the Cambodian government will spend 6.39 million US dollars for the whole infrastructure ...

China has done a lot to support Cambodia over the years with millions of dollars in aid, loans and investment. But after reports this week that China has pledged another $500 million in soft loans and grants—and publicly thanked Cambodia for its support in Southeast ...

As much as local people are benefiting from the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) recovery project following last year’s record floods, they aren’t receiving all the benefits they could, according to some accounts. Operating in five provinces of Cambodia to restore road access to those affected by the floods, ...

Members of Bunong ethnic minority forest group in Kratie province who accused local police of barring their community patrols in search of illegal logging were told by a Forestry Administration official yesterday that they had no authority to operate. Mr. [Peit] Kun Pedor [head of ...

The site of Koh Pur village’s new bridge may still be nothing more than pillars in a dusty crevice in the road, but when the link is finished – some time in December, authorities say – it will be a welcome relief for the village ...

Contractors hired by Cambodian land brokers bulldozed through four hectares of villagers’ crops in Poipet town on Monday, breaching a truce contract that protected the villagers’ land until January 1 next year. According to the contract, the families residing on land claimed by 11 independent Cambodian ...

A breached flood protection dyke near Prey Ven city that, had it burst during the disastrous 2011 flooding, would have added a further 30,000 to the almost 52,000 households evacuated, is one project nearing completion in Cambodia’s Flood Damage Emergency Reconstruction Project. But the Asian Development ...