Environment and natural resources

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday marked National Fish Day by urging the public to report anyone fishing inside the Tonle Sap conservation area he established earlier this year to help protect and revive the lake’s vital fish stocks. “People have to dare to stand up and ...

At least 500,000 baby fish and 100,000 young shrimps had been released into a reservoir in the Eastern part of Cambodia on Sunday to mark the 10th National Fish Day. Annual event is aimed at encouraging people to actively join forces to preserve fish species ...

The Venerable Sann Leang, executive director of NGO Environmental More than 500 villagers held a march in eastern Cambodia Friday to protest a controversial dam project on the Mekong River in Laos they say is undergoing construction despite a pledge to halt progress while officials ...

Cambodian villagers demonstrated on Friday against a controversial Lao hydropower dam that activists say is being built in defiance of an agreement to assess its potentially damaging impact on millions of people first. About 200 villagers whose livelihoods depend on the Mekong River urged a halt ...

Cambodia’s government has ignored a suspension on new land concessions to private companies, announcements in an official publication showed, despite ordering a freeze after growing discontent over forced evictions and illegal logging. Prime Minister Hun Sen signed off on 12 sub-decrees on June 7 and 12 ...

The arrival of Startup Weekend in Cambodia marked a new beginning for high-tech entrepreneurship as more than 80 people worked on all kinds of new business ideas all weekend at Yellow Tower across the Tonle Sap from The Riverside. Chief Marketing Officer Joey Pomerenke of Startup ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen has signed off on four more economic land concessions (ELCs), all in protected areas, despite placing a moratorium on granting such leases on May 7. Since the May 7 sub-decree, the premier has now signed off on seven concessions totalling 56,586 hectares ...

Forestry Administration officials have confiscated 15 cubic meters of luxury-grade wood from a truck belonging to hotel and casino magnate Try Pheap in Kompong Thom province. Soth Mary, a division director for the Forestry Administration in the province, said yesterday that his staff stopped a truck ...

In April, Chut Wutty was shot to death in the Cambodian forests he was so outspoken in defending, a slaying that outraged human rights activists suspicious of the conflicting explanations given by police. His death appears to be part of a chilling trend. Growing numbers of activists ...

Commune and village officials in Kratie province yesterday threatened to shut down a community meeting on the protection of Prey Long forest because the organizers had failed to get permission and allegedly invited only opposition party activists. The authorities eventually allowed the meeting to proceed, after ...

Report from tourism ministry said: in 2011, it gained 2.8 million tourist arrivals and harvested for 1.9 billion US dollars. For fourth months of 2012, we received over 1, 272,514 foreign tourists, an increase of over 27 percent if comparing the same period of last year. Tourism industry offered direct jobs of 350,000. Ministry urged to ...

New satellite images of Oddar Meanchey province promise to help settle wildly conflicting deforestation estimates inside a 64,000-hectare area, which is set to anchor the country’s first forest-based carbon trading scheme. With the project potentially ready to sell carbon credits to foreign firms in a matter ...

A biofuel company is currently under investigation for fraud in the U.K. after millions of dollars of investors’ money was spent on a jatropha plantation in Banteay Meanchey province that never produced even a single drop of biodiesel. The company, London-based Sustainable Agro Energy PLC, had ...

The Koh Kong Provincial Court yesterday questioned the seventh and final witness to the April 26 shooting death of well-known environmental activist Chut Wutty by provincial military police officer In Ratana, court officials said. Srey Makny, the court’s deputy prosecutor, said witness Bou An was questioned ...

Another witness to the fatal shootings of environmental activist Chut Wutty and military police officer In Rattana was questioned at Koh Kong Provincial Court yesterday. Bou Orn is the third employee of logging company Timbergreen – a firm Chut Wutty was investigating for alleged illegal logging ...

The U.S. firm selling credits for a carbon trading scheme that could earn Cambodia tens of millions of dollars said yesterday that sales could start in a matter of months, despite mounting claims of deforestation within the community forests set to anchor the project. ...

Banteay Meanchey’s provincial environment department, a local company and two bulldozer drivers, have sued four villagers in Banteay Meanchey province over their alleged role in a violent land protest in February. The villagers, who have been summoned for questioning this week, stand accused of intentional property ...

A military police commander has filed a complaint against a Forestry Administration chief whom he accuses of wrongly sending authorities to search a truck suspected of transporting illegally logged luxury wood, officials said yesterday. When Forestry Administration officials searched the truck at a military police base in Kompong Thom province on ...

The U.N. has said it is concerned about deforestation in Oddar Meanchey province in an area where it has launched a carbon trading scheme and confirmed that it is working with the government in order to “rectify the situation.” In an email on Friday, the ...

A Health Ministry official said yesterday the government was still hoping to recoup the last $20 million of a Global Fund grant for fighting malaria that the international charity has held back because of Cambodia’s poor use of fund dollars. Last week, a spokesman for the ...

The Kratie Provincial Court yesterday issued a search warrant for the home of Chum Vuthy, a man who allegedly trades in luxury wood, in Kratie City, provincial police said. Mr. Vuthy had been transporting a load of illegal lumber from Stung Treng City to Vietnam and ...

NagaCorp, the owner of Phnom Penh’s only licensed casino, launched the sale of tickets for a new national lottery on Friday with the inaugural draw to take place on July 12 and a top prize of $218,000. In a statement, NagaCorp said 30 percent of net ...

Boeng Kak protesters continued their fight for the release of 14 women and one man imprisoned since May 24, delivering a petition to the Senate and the Japanese Embassy on Friday that they hope will spur new intervention in the long-running land dispute. More than 100 ...

In Phnom Penh’s Daun Penh district there is a 133-hectare mound of sand that was once a lake. It took nearly four years to fill Boeng Kak with that sand. On the southern perimeter of the massive sand pit sit two large billboards. On those billboards there ...