Development policy and administration

A week after British researchers released a study warning that the nation’s grasslands would soon be lost if drastic action was not taken to protect them, some agricultural experts have called for moderation, noting that the intensive rice cultivation blamed for the grasslands’ destruction is ...

The Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund has committed to provide another $10 mln U.S. in grants to address the environmental crisis engulfing mainland Southeast Asia. The ground-breaking biodiversity fund was launched in 2008. During the first phase, $10 mln was invested in efforts to conserve the critical ...

Around half of Cambodia’s tropical flooded grasslands have been lost in just 10 years according to new research from the University of East Anglia. The seasonally flooded grasslands around the Tonle Sap, Southeast Asia’s largest freshwater lake, are of great importance for biodiversity and a ...

The government has announced plans for a landmark project to create a system for diverting and then stocking waste water, in a bid to prevent run-off into the streets of Phnom Penh and the Tonle Sap river. Moeung Sophan, a consultant to the Phnom Penh Department ...

The government announced new plans for developing both transportation and rural sanitation at the annual meeting of the Ministry of Rural Development at the Chaktomuk Conference Hall in Phnom Penh yesterday. According to officials at the event, the ministry will be completing by year’s end a ...

A CPP lawmaker said yesterday the government has signed 13 payment guarantees to companies constructing coal-fired power plants and hydropower dams in the country, a move that an Asian Development Bank (ADB) official reiterated was risky for the country’s fiscal future. CPP lawmaker Cheam Yeap said ...

The government’s guaranteed bailout of major infrastructure projects, such as the future 400-megawatt hydropower dam in Stung Treng province, requires a thorough assessment of forecasted risks – a capacity which the government currently does not possess, an Asian Development Bank (ADB) official said yesterday. Speaking on ...

Ethnic minority villagers expecting to be displaced by a proposed Chinese-built hydroelectric dam in northeastern Cambodia are asking the country’s parliament not to approve a law providing financial guarantees for the project. Villagers living along three rivers that will be affected by the dam spoke ...

Hong Kong has banned egg imports from Cambodia due to the country’s recent avian influenza outbreak, which claimed four lives last month. “Hong Kong does not import live poultry or poultry meat from Cambodia, but 170,000 poultry eggs were imported from there last year,” the ...

Experts are recommending that a proposed dam on the Sesan River in northeast Cambodia be equipped with earthquake protection measures, after discovering a quake occurred in the area some 30 years ago. The proposed Lower Sesan II dam would be situated on a site in Stung ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday ordered officials to take action against unnamed companies he said were using the cover of night to illegally dredge sand from the Mekong River. Calling on Water Resources and Meteorology Minister Lim Kean Hor to lead the crackdown, Hun Sen also ...

Vietnam urged Laos to halt construction of a $3.5 billion hydropower dam pending further study, environmental activists said on Friday after a meeting of the Mekong River Commission. The activists said Cambodia, also downriver from the Xayaburi dam, accused Laos during heated discussions on Wednesday and ...

Regional conservationists criticised the Mekong River Commission (MRC) yesterday for leaving the controversial Xayaburi Dam off its agenda at this week’s annual ministerial meeting in Luang Prabang, Laos. Laotian authorities said they would confirm their decision to go ahead with the hydropower project in the mainstream ...

Exports of milled rice had fallen dramatically last year because of the poor quality of paddy rice, insiders said yesterday. Milled-rice producers told the Post that a large amount of paddy rice broke. From every 100 kilograms of paddy rice, 20 to 23 kilograms of milled rice ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday appealed to the private sector for the second time to invest in fire trucks instead of depending on the government’s fire departments. “Please try to do two jobs. The first is to get the fire sprinkler systems into the factory ...

Cambodia, Laos and the Philippines are the three Southeast Asian countries most heavily exposed to fiscal risks from disasters, the World Bank warned yesterday. In its annual economic update on East Asia and the Pacific, the bank said the region was the most disaster-stricken in the ...

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said Monday he decided to choose environment protection, not to choose 30 billion U.S. dollar expected revenues from the exploitation of titanium ore in Southwestern Cambodia. “According to a feasibility study, titanium ore deposit in Chhiphat district in Koh Kong province ...

The Government of Cambodia on Friday passed a draft law on fire prevention in order to contribute to maintaining security, social safety, public order, and life and property protection, according to a media statement released after the weekly Cabinet meeting. In the meeting, Hun Sen ...

Workers who directly witnessed the Stung Atai dam accident more than a week ago have contested government accounts, telling the Post four, not three, men were still missing after an outlet pipe burst. Those working or living near the dam also told the Post investigations pledged ...

Nineteen families from Svay Pak commune in Russey Keo district protested for a second day Wednesday after their homes fell into the Tonle Sap River. Twenty-four houses along the river have been affected, they said. Although five have already left, the other 19 refuse to accept ...

With three workers still missing after a major breach at a chinese built hydropower dam in Pursat province on Saturday, the Government’s investigation into what went wrong and why appears to be moving slowly. A large set ion of a concrete tunnel at Stung Atai ...

PHNOM PENH – Authorities are searching for three missing construction workers at a Chinese hydroelectric dam in Pursat province, after pipes burst there on Saturday, causing a flash flood. One man, who had been fishing nearby and was thought missing, has been found “safe and alive” ...

Cambodia on Monday recorded 162 landmine casualties in the first ten months of this year, down 4 percent from 155 casualties at the same period last year, showed a report from the Cambodian Mine and Explosive Remnants of War Victim Information System. The report said that ...

As the latest UN climate change conference begins today in Doha, Qatar, a coalition of Cambodian NGOs is joining calls for developed countries to bear more of the burden of combating climate change. Cambodia and other poor countries are unprepared to deal with rapid climate change ...