Economic land concessions and plantations

The high-pitched whine of chainsaws drowned out the sound of birds and bugs you usually hear during any trek through Prey Lang forest. What was once an area full of animals scurrying under the shade of gargantuan trees is now largely populated by stumps and ash. The ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen has decided to cut land from an economic land concession (ELC) and a rubber plantation to grant land titles to more than 1,000 villagers in Tbong Khmum province’s Memot district, according to the Land Management Ministry. ...

In defiance of an order by Phnom Penh Deputy Governor Khoun Sreng, more than 100 people protested outside the offices of Equitable Cambodia (EC) yesterday. They held signs denouncing the NGO, as community representatives inside submitted a letter withdrawing their consent for the group to represent ...

Representatives of evicted families and a sugarcane plantation owned by a prominent CPP senator announced an agreement on Thursday that provides compensation ranging from $500 to $5,000 to eligible villagers after a five-year battle over land. ...

Meanchey district police and security guards yesterday clashed with about 70 Koh Kong province villagers at the capital’s Samaki Rainsy pagoda, shoving and pushing them as they tried to make their way to the Ministry of Land Management. ...

The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said by the end of the first half of this year, it had collected about $600,000 in taxes from economic land concessions (ELCs) from 21 of the 223 private companies that received ELCs from the government, according to ...

Recently appointed Agriculture Minister Veng Sakhon held a first-ever meeting with economic land concession (ELC) grantees yesterday and was promptly met with a barrage of complaints.   ...

Representatives from communities in four provinces evicted to make way for sugar plantations alleged during a press conference yesterday they were barred from delivering petitions to the Ministry of Land Management. ...

Over 20 Cambodian NGOs, Chinese government officials, public and private Chinese companies, and Chinese NGOs held a roundtable discussion on Friday in Phnom Penh to talk about Chinese investment in Cambodia. ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen announced yesterday that he will appoint a government official to answer questions in the National Assembly about economic land concessions (ELC) allegedly granted to members of the Vietnamese military in Rattanakiri province. ...

Preah Vihear’s deputy governor has vowed not to let protesters near Prime Minister Hun Sen as he cuts the ribbon on a $360 million sugar mill in Tbeng Meanchey district today. ...

The bulk of Cambodia’s economic land concessions (ELCs) – at the centre of numerous land disputes and human rights concerns over the past two decades – generated just $5 million for state coffers last year, with critics attributing the meagre returns to a lack of ...

Villagers from Preah Vihear’s Kulen district, where last week two rubber company guard posts were torched, yesterday alleged security guards from the same company had looted their homes and threatened to burn them. ...

One of four rubber plantations operated by the Vietnamese military in Ratanakkiri province had its contract with the government canceled last month amid accusations that it had engaged in illegal logging and had allowed Vietnamese farmers to encroach on Cambodian land, the director of the ...

For generations, the indigenous Bunong were famous as the great elephant keepers and masters of the forests in eastern Cambodia. They called the fertile, rolling hills of their ancestral homeland “meh ne,” or mother – a source of food, livelihoods and self-identity. ...

Authority over economic land concessions (ELCs) currently under the purview of the Ministry of Environment will be transferred to the Ministry of Agriculture, while all protected areas and nature preserves currently under the Ministry of Agriculture will pass to the Ministry of Environment, according to ...

Hundreds of cubic meters of timber on a Mondulkiri economic land concession leased to the Uni-Green Company burned to the ground yesterday after an alleged fire from a nearby forest jumped to the property, according to provincial governor Svay Sam Eng, who added that despite ...

A representative for  250 families locked in a land dispute in a remote area of Kampong Speu province is calling on the national government to intervene, alleging collusion between the district governor as well as Master International Cooperation Group, which residents of three villages accuse ...

Nearly 100 residents from six communities within Phnom Penh’s Chroy Changvar district filed a petition to City Hall, the Canadian Embassy and the World Bank yesterday demanding intervention in a land dispute with the Overseas Cambodian Investment Corporation (OCIC), which is responsible for constructing a ...

Indigenous peoples fighting economic land concessions (ELCs) in Cambodia are more likely to get results with violent protest than lodging their complaints through legitimate channels, a controversial study published this month argues. ...

Several hundred villagers protested outside the Kampong Speu Provincial Hall yesterday, demanding the return of thousands lost to economic land concessions (ELCs) in a years-old land dispute with a Chinese company and a prominent tycoon. ...

A “major breakthrough” has been reached in discussions between Vietnamese rubber giant Hoang Anh Gia Lai and 11 indigenous communities in Ratanakkiri province that have lost land and resources to the company’s plantations. ...

A half-dozen villagers from Oddar Meanchey province traveled to Phnom Penh on Wednesday to ask the highest levels of government to return the farmland that thousands of families say they had stolen from them by a trio of Thai-owned sugarcane plantations. ...

In perhaps the most comprehensive review to date of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s 2012 land titling project, the NGO Forum on Tuesday said the campaign has yielded major benefits, but not without some serious costs—particularly for the country’s beleaguered indigenous communities. ...