Environment and natural resources

Villagers who have spent recent days patrolling Prey Lang forest would file a complaint to the prime minister alleging government officials and private companies are clearing parts of the forest, a spokesman said yesterday. The 70-strong citizen patrol team who scoured the forest this week ...

Construction of the main structure of the supposedly on-hold Xayaburi dam could begin by the end of this year, the Thai company contracted to build it said yesterday. Ch Karnchang chief executive Plew Trivisvavet said preparatory work at the site of the proposed US$3.8 billion, 1,285-megawatt ...

Drought has been hitting 11 out of the 24 cities and provinces in Cambodia and affecting tens of thousands of hectares of rice seedlings, Keo Vy, spokesman and chief of the Cabinet of the National Committee for Disaster Management, said Thursday The drought-hit provinces are Kampong ...

Work has resumed on a controversial $3.5 billion dam across the Mekong River in Laos, its Thai developer said on Thursday, contradicting Laotian assurances it had been suspended following protests over its environmental impact. Laos agreed in December to suspend the Xayaburi dam project and said ...

After a brief détente, a fight over the Prey Trolach community forest in Battambang province that has its citizen guardians and the Forestry Administration pitted against the military is back on, those working to protect the area from illegal logging said yesterday. Since it was deemed ...

Authorities in Stung Treng province have confiscated some 651 pieces of “luxury timber” from three communes in Se San district over the past week in an ongoing operation to crack down on illegal logging in the area, police said. The goods were confiscated just as a ...

Members of the Prey Long People’s Network ended a three-day patrol of the forest yesterday and said they had discovered about 300 cubic meters of illegally logged timber and swathes of state-owned forest being encroached on by private companies. “Authorities are paying no attention to itthey ...

Community activists patrolling the Prey Lang forest for a second day yesterday claimed to have found more evidence of illegal logging – in the form of hundreds of cubic metres of timber and several hectares of cleared land. Prey Lang network representative Hoeun Sopheap said villagers ...

Cambodia annulled licenses to four private firms whose concession of 40,000 hectares threatens Prey Lang, one of the richest national forests. A letter from the Council of Ministers to the Ministry for Agriculture, Forestry and Mining, in charge of managing the forests and the natural resources, ...

About 100 villagers in Kompong Thom province set out yesterday on a three-day patrol of Prey Long forest in search of illegal logging, their second since the April 26 shooting death of conservationist Chut Wutty. who was the organizer of the first patrols. Soem Sean, a ...

An expedition to expose illegal logging uncovered about 50 hectares of clear-felled forest yesterday that activists from the Prey Lang Community Network have filmed and photographed to lobby government officials, a group representative said. Chum Yin said more than 60 villagers had traveled to seven villages ...

Nearly 100 Prey Lang villagers in Kampong Thom province’s Sandan district will today embark on a three-day “forest watch” mission to monitor what community representatives say are increased illegal logging activities in the jungle. This is the fourth time the community has conducted monitoring in the ...

More than 16,000 hectares of rice paddies are currently being affected by drought across the country, officials said yesterday. “There wasn’t enough rain for the rice this year, ” said Nhep Srorn, director of Takeo province’s agriculture department. Pich Sokhin, governor of Oddar Meanchey province, said ...

Concerns that a drought may soon grip some of Cambodia’s provinces intensified after the government allocated thousands of cubic metres of water to more than 20,000 hectares of dried rice paddies in a mission to save valuable rice crops last weekend. Although the rainy season has cloaked ...

Children played along the banks of Phnom Penh’s Chroy Changva peninsula yesterday, while their parents napped under the shade of their bright yellow and blue boat homes. But members of this Cham fishing community overlooking Phnom Penh’s city space said it was a very different scene on ...

South Korea and Cambodia have agreed to share military supplies in peacekeeping and rescue operations as part of efforts to expand military ties between the two sides, the defense ministry here said Tuesday. Lee Seon-chul, the head of the South Korean defense ministry’s logistics managment bureau, ...

The 4th world class Japanese Oji Paper Co. Ltd will invest in tree planting in Cambodia for paper manufacture. The information was made known here on Aug. 7 by the Japanese company’s Director Mr. Shimamura Gemmei in a meeting with Cambodian Minister of Agriculture, Forestry ...

More than 100 Cham fishing families who moor their boat homes on the banks of Phnom Penh’s Chroy Changva peninsula have been ordered to relocate, with one official saying the fishing boats were spoiling the beauty of the riverbank and the area around the new hotel. “We already ...

Large dump trucks with beds full of rusted, twisted metal and aluminium canss rolled in, one after another, to unload their cargo at Phnom Penh’s largest scrap yard in Dangkao district. “All the metal must be exported because there are no recycling factories here [in Cambodia],” ...

Hundreds of indigenous people called on government to pick up the pace in granting them communal land titles at a ceremony marking the U.N.-sponsored International Day of the World’s Indigenous People in Kompong Thom province yesterday. “The gathering today is to mark the 8th anniversary of Indigenous Day ...

In an outbuilding at Lok Sear’s rice milling operation in Kandal province, two four-meter-high cylindrical machines vibrate and hum as the occasional chicken and duck pecks near the concrete blocks holding them up. While they do both feature a thinck band of aluminium around their ...

Forestry administration officials in Battambang province have stepped in to stop the destruction of a community forest area by military and police, officials said yesterday. Over two past months, soldiers, police and military police have destroyed part of the 1,335-hectare Prey Tralach forest in Rokha Kiri district, which ...

Officials at a recent energy conference in Phnom Penh stressed that Cambodia needed to use energy more efficiently to meet regional goals, boost economic development and lower overall harm to the environment. More than 150 energy officials from the public and private sectors came together for ...

Fishermen bring their boats to shore, pack away their traps and hand over the day’s catch to their awaiting families on the banks of the Mekong River in Kratie province’s Chitra Borei district. “When my husband arrives home each day, we eat some of what he ...