Environment and natural resources

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 ...

As air-conditioning units slow to a halt, computers die and the lights go out, the frustration of local business owners and organizations in Phnom Penh is boiling over once again as the annual hot season blackouts have arrived. The 190-megawatt, Chinese-built Kamchay hydropower dam in ...

An updated documentary, “Where Have All the Fish Gone?,” examines the impacts of hydroelectric dams on the Mekong River. The Xayaburi dam, which would produce hydropower for market, has become a divisive issue among Mekong River countries. Critics say it could severely damage ecosystems on which ...

Residents of a village in the middle of Cambodia’s Tonle Sap “Great Lake” live surrounded by water, but don’t have enough access to clean water for drinking, cooking, and washing. The Tonle Sap, a combined lake and river system that swells in the rainy season to ...

Hun Sen asked authorities to maintain the pristine beaches along coastal provinces by not allowing any industrial factories to be constructed on or near them. The comment was aimed towards an agreement signed by Cambodian and Chinese companies late last month to build a $2.3 ...

Cambodia on Tuesday officially inaugurated the National Council on Green Growth, aiming at developing a sustainable economic society with natural resource and environment sustainability. Cambodia has adopted several legal instruments for the green growth implementation. Those included the roadmap for green growth, the memorandum of ...

Hun Sen announced that 1.5 mln hectares of Economic Land Concessions were granted to private companies. 1.2 mln hectares, 80 percent, of the concessions are used for rubber plantation sector. He said, that Cambodia still maintain[s] 9.2 mln hectares of forest land even though 1.5 mln ...

The Ministry of Tourism and the French TV channel TF1 have signed a deal on a “2013 action plan” that will promote Cambodia’s beach tourism. The agreement was inked yesterday by Tourism Minister Thong Khon and Franck Firmin Guion, the president of Adventure Line Product-ions (ALP). The plan ...

Activists in Kratie province’s Snuol district seized seven chainsaws over the weekend and collected evidence that four police checkpoints were used to solicit bribes from illegal loggers, representatives of the network said yesterday. After scouring thousands of hectares of protected forest from Friday through yesterday, the ...

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 ...

Faced with widespread evictions and opaque private sector deals, activists in Cambodia are calling on the government to be more open and transparent about land concessions, beef up mechanisms for resolving land disputes, and abide by the rule of law. It is estimated that ...

Dotted with rice fields flanked by palm trees, Cambodia’s southeastern province of Kampong Speu is nothing short of picturesque. But behind the idyllic exterior is an on-going struggle to turn this region’s natural beauty into a global attraction and improve the lot of poor local farmers, ...

Eight members of the Prey Lang forest community network, summonsed to the Kampong Thom provincial court yesterday to answer a 2011 complaint, rejected its accusation that they had caused intentional damage by uprooting cassava plants belonging to Ol Ratha and maintained they had acted only ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen has called on Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar and Laos to help curb the illegal trade in rosewood after Cambodia’s bloodiest year yet for logging-related border shootings. Speaking to reporters at Phnom Penh International Airport after the premier returned from a two-day meeting ...

The 16th Conference of Parties of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) has brought thousands of delegates from over 150 countries to Bangkok to discuss cross-border cooperation, sustainable use of biodiversity and transnational endangered species issues. Construction has already begun on the ...

In the past four years, families in Anlong Chrey village, in Kampong Speu provinces’s Thpong district, have watched a small multipurpose dam being built at their back doors. For village chief Soung Pao, 59, who gave up two hectares for the dam – one of ...

Siamese Rosewood, which is illegally logged and exported from Cambodia in large quantities, will be protected internally as a threatened species following a decision taken in Bangkok yesterday. A meeting of the 177 countries party to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild ...

As examples, Laos broke ground on a new Mekong River dam that’s causing concern bordering on fury in Cambodia and Vietnam. India is enraged about a new Chinese dam going up on the Brahmaputra River. And Ethiopia’s new dam on the Nile is angering Sudan, ...

The European Union in efforts to reduce the poverty rate and secure a free society has awarded $4.5 mln to four projects. These projects will work to improve justice, natural resources, land rights, and build the capabilities of local authorities. Four projects were selected among ...

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 ...

Preah Vihear province – The residents of this sleepy district, on the edge of the Boeng Per Wildlife Sanctuary, grow rice, cassava and cashew nuts. But in a few short years, Chinese investors envisage that Rovieng will be rapidly transformed into an industrial town. ...

Two men were arrested yesterday and more than 1 ton of rosewood was confiscated after the car they were using to transport the illegally logged luxury wood smashed through a police barricade in Kandal province, officials said. Deputy Kandal provincial police chief Sao Sothun said that ...

A disguised shipment of nearly eight cubic metres of illegal rosewood worth an estimated $50,000 was snagged yesterday in a Forestry Administration dragnet in Siem Reap province after agents in Banteay Meanchey alerted authorities the shipment was headed their way, Forestry officials said. Siem Reap Provincial ...

More than 400 activists fighting the destruction of the Prey Lang forest held a ceremony yesterday in which they tied Buddhist monk’s robes around the trunks of trees – a gesture of protection – to stop them from being cut down. Six monks and villagers from ...