Environment and natural resources

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 ...

Villagers belonging to a Thai activist group filed a complaint to Thailand’s Administrative Court yesterday for the cancellation of an agreement form the country’s Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand to buy power from a controversial mainstream Mekong dam in Laos, an NGO representative said yesterday. “According ...

Political activists and watchdog organisations say Cambodia’s US$13 million revenue from the mining sector over the last five years is exceedingly low and that the government must be more transparent. The claims come after the Ministry of Mines, Industry and Energy (MIME) released its figures on the mining ...

Sarorn Phi, 39, cautiously stops his moto 20 metres away from the large, signless boom gate blocking his path in Sesan district. He shuffles toward the security guard’s hut at the entrance to a sprawling Chinese rubber plantation and negotiates with the guard to enter ...

When 41-year-old Pheng Seng’s brick-making business was ravaged by flood in Kratie province a year ago, he lost about US$5,000. Kratie town also flooded this time a year ago. It was so bad that speedboats were seen zipping through the streets past submerged motorcycles with ...

For Cambodian farmer In Chanthy, illuminating the rural night used to be tiresome task. His village in Svay Rieng province is not connected to the national electricity grid and to light the dark he would have to take car batteries to a station and pay ...

In a rare victory for those battling to preserve Prey Lang forest, the government has cancelled four economic land concessions in the area totalling more than 40,000 hectares that threatened pristine ecosystems. Another 3,200 hectare ELC in Koh Kong province has also been cancelled, while two ...

Phnom Penh: “Cambodia is needing $ 1 billion over the years or at least 100 million annual investment to develop renewable energy projects for rural electrification in order to reduce its dependence on diesel consumption,” said Mr. Toch Sovanna, Director of Departmemnt of Energy Technique, ...

For the past several days, Boonma and seven other Houay Souy villagers have travelled back to their homes near the Xayaburi Dam building site on the Lao side of the Mekong River. Since the beginning of the year they have been relocated to a new ...

Nineteen families from Pursat province’s Prangil commune, plagued by a long-running land dispute with developer Pheapimex, are in despair now that student volunteer surveyors cannot help them reclaim land they say is rightfully theirs. Prime Minister Hun Sen on Wednesday revealed he had revised his ...

The Philippines has summoned Cambodia’s ambassador over comments linked to Manila’s territorial row with Beijing. Hos Sereythonh was asked to explain remarks accusing the Philippines and Vietnam of playing “dirty politics” over the issue of Asean and the South China Sea. [H]e did not turn up on ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Thursday charged six people, including a provincial director of water resources and a commune chief, for their involvement in creating illegal fishing reservoirs in Kompong Thom province. “They were charged with clearing a flooded forest for encroachment and illegally constructing ...

In his first public meeting in weeks, Deputy Prime Minister Sok An on Friday met with a delegation of Thai officials in Phnom Penh and pledged Cambodia’s commitment to resolve a decade-old maritime dispute over contested maritime space in the Gulf of Thailand. Speaking to reporters ...

On Saturday, the family of slain environmental activist Chut Wutty will commemorate the 100 days, or thereabouts, that have passed since his death in a case that remains unresolved even though six eyewitnesses have already been questioned. The official story is that he was killed by ...