Agriculture and fishing
High hopes for fishing season
The largest fish harvest of the year is approaching, and Phnom Penh’s fish markets are about to get busy. In short, it’s December and so prahok season is upon us. A traditional Cambodian fish paste, prahok is made from fermented Siamese mud carp called trey riel in ...
Chan Muy Hong
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/business/high-hopes-fishing-season
Bunong Living on Land Concession Evicted
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 ...
Mech Dara and Ben Sokhean
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/bunong-living-on-land-concession-evicted-48732/
Hong Kong delegates talk Cambodian rice
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 ...
Chan Muy Hong
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/business/hong-kong-delegates-talk-cambodian-rice
Farmers weigh up US technology
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 ...
Chan Muy Hong and Eddie Morton
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/business/farmers-weigh-us-technology
Try Pheap Firm in Talks to Replicate Timber Deal
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 ...
Zsombor Peter and Aun Pheap
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/try-pheap-firm-in-talks-to-replicate-timber-deal-48511/
Private Ship Registry Did Not Monitor Compliance
The privately-operated International Ship Registry of Cambodia (ISROC), a South Korea-based company that owns the rights to register foreign vessels under the Cambodian flag, told ship owners last year that it was not monitoring their observance of international maritime laws, and that it was their ...
Denise Hruby
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/private-ship-registry-did-not-monitor-compliance-48532/
Website of Company Running Ship Registry Closed Down
The website of the International Ship Registry of Cambodia (ISROC), a private company based in South Korea that bought the rights from the government to register foreign vessels under the Cambodian national flag for $6 million, is no longer operating. The shutdown means that foreign vessels ...
Denise Hruby
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/website-of-company-running-ship-registry-closed-down-48428/
Bank exits rubber firm: NGO
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 ...
Shane Worrell
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/bank-exits-rubber-firm-ngo
China Surprises Governor With Lesser Donation
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 ...
Ben Sokhean
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/business/china-surprises-governor-with-lesser-donation-48459/
Rubber firm tells villagers to bounce
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 ...
Sen David
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/rubber-firm-tells-villagers-bounce
Mekong Dams a Long-Term Risk to Food Security
The momentum toward large-scale dams on the Mekong River may be unstoppable, but governments must work fast to mitigate their effects on fisheries and biodiversity or risk long-term food insecurity for millions of people whose lives depend on the river and its tributaries, leading academics ...
Simon Henderson
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/mekong-dams-a-long-term%E2%80%88risk-to-food-security-48415/
China provides agricultural engines to Cambodia for post-flood rehabilitation
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 ...
Xinhuanet News Staff
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2013-12/02/c_132935559.htm
Loggers questioned by court
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, ...
Phak Seangly
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/loggers-questioned-court
China provides agricultural engines to Cambodia for post-flood rehabilitation
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 ...
Xinhuanet News Staff
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2013-12/02/c_132935757.htm
Cambodia's Siem Reap, China's Jiangxi ink cooperation deal
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 ...
Xinhuanet News Staff
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2013-11/30/c_132930687.htm
Local Groups Say They Must Protect Forest, as Government Fails
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 ...
Sok Khemara
http://www.voacambodia.com/content/local-grouos-say-they-must-protect-forest-as-government-fails/1800429.html
Lawyers Against ‘Blood Sugar’ Launch Fundraising Campaign
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 ...
Kimseng Men
http://www.voacambodia.com/content/lawyer-against-blood-sugar-launch-funraising-campaign/1800116.html
Government Sold National Ship Registry Rights
Cambodia has no control over Cambodian-flagged ships complicit in illegal activities on the high seas as the government sold the authority to register ocean-going vessels, under Cambodia’s national flag, to a company in South Korea for $6 million, a Council of Ministers official claimed Thursday. On ...
Denise Hruby and Kuch Naren
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/government-sold%E2%80%88national-ship-registry-rights-48186/
Official Retracts Comments About Logging in Wildlife Sanctuary
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 ...
Aun Pheap and Ben Wood
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/official-retracts-comments-about-logging-in-wildlife-sanctuary-48211/
EU Fish Ban Blamed on Cambodian-Flagged Vessels
A ban on imports of Cambodian seafood proposed by the European Commission (E.C.) is in direct response to Cambodian-flagged vessels complicit in illegal fishing in international waters, Jean-Francois Cautain, European Union (E.U.) ambassador to Cambodia, said Wednesday. The E.C. on Tuesday announced that Cambodia was “non-cooperating ...
Denise Hruby
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/eu-fish-ban-blamed-on-cambodian-flagged-vessels-48065/
EU's fish import ban not harming Cambodia's export: official
The European Commission’s proposed ban on fish imports from Cambodia would cause no harm to the country’s fish exports since it has never sold fish to European countries, a Cambodian fisheries chief said Wednesday. “The sanctions, announced by the European Commission on Tuesday, do not affect ...
Xinhuanet News Staff
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/business/2013-11/27/c_132922402.htm
Felling illegal: villagers
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 ...
Phak Seangly
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/felling-illegal-villagers
Ex-Environment Minister Says Deforestation Exaggerated
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 ...
Ben Woods and Aun Pheap
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/ex-environment-minister-says-deforestation-exaggerated-47930/
EU to ban fish imports from Belize, Guinea and Cambodia
Fish imports from Belize, Guinea and Cambodia are to be banned from the European Union, and three more countries have been warned their imports are in danger, in the first major sanction against countries that allow illegal fishing operations to carry on under their countries’ ...
Fiona Harvey
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/nov/26/eu-ban-fish-import-belize-guinea-cambodia-illegal-fishing