Environment and natural resources

Despite recent efforts by the authorities to improve drainage systems around the capital, heavy flooding and swamped roads were the norm over the past week as the kick-off to the rainy season saw pelting rain almost every afternoon, residents say. Old drainage systems put in place ...

An explosion at a steel mill in Phnom Penh’s Meanchey district left two employees seriously injured over the weekend, authorities said. Mao Saroeun, Stung Meanchey commune police chief, said that around 10pm on Sunday there was a small, loud explosion at a mill owned by the ...

A worker was slightly injured and more than US$100,000 in property destroyed yesterday in a fire at an oil factory in Kandal province’s Ang Snuol district, police said. Thach Phalla, Ang Snuol district deputy police chief, said the fire started at noon when some oil overflowed ...

A study the Lao government has used to claim the Xayaburi dam would be harmless if redesigned has been criticised for not addressing concerns about the project’s effect on fish in the Lower Mekong river. Lao Vice Minister of Energy and Mines Viraponh Viravong was reported ...

Three more witnesses have been summonsed for questioning over the fatal shooting of prominent environmentalist Chut Wutty and military police officer In Rattana, rights groups said yesterday. In Kongchit, Koh Kong provincial coordinator for rights group Licadho, said yesterday that deputy prosecutor Srey Mak Ny had ...

One of the journalists on the scene when environmentalist Chut Wutty was gunned down last month appeared in a Koh Kong provincial court yesterday to answer questions about the shooting incident, which also led to the death of military police officer In Rattana. According to human ...

A married couple and another man were called before a judge yesterday after being charged with clearing protected forest in Koh Kong province’s Kandorl commune. Kry Deuy, his wife, Moeung Yan, and a man named Soun Sareth cleared about 16 hectares of state-protected forest to cultivate ...

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Throughout the drama this spring revolving around the dismissal of the ambitious Chinese official Bo Xilai and the investigation of his wife as a murder suspect, the most mysterious figure has been a French architect named Patrick Henri Devillers. When Mr. Bo ...

Rising oil prices fuelled a month-to-month inflationary increase of 5.4 per cent through February and March, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics. Factors such as sanctions on Iranian oil, as well as floods that depleted Cambodian crops last year accounted for the rise ...

Villagers in Battambang province’s Phnom Proek district have called on the government to shut down several unlicensed gold mines being blamed for the deaths of cattle that drank from a pond contaminated by chemical runoff. “Three of the village’s cows died and two became sick after ...

Anti-logging activists have accused authorities of attempting to collect the names of roughly 400 people who attended a memorial service in Koh Kong province last week for the outspoken environmental campaigner Chut Wutty, who was shot dead last month. Although the memorial service at the spot ...

More than two weeks after the murder of conservationist Chut Wutty in the forests of the Cardamom Mountains, the future of his small NGO remains in doubt. But NGOs and communities who worked with Chut Wutty over the years say the larger fate of his ...

Large payouts last year by local insurance companies to two garment factory owners and regional natural catastrophes have resulted in a huge hike in the cost of fire insurance for commercial premises in Cambodia, brokers said. Cambodia’s insurance industry paid out some $24 million in fire ...

CEDAC, a domestic agriculture development organisation and the Kingdom’s largest distributor of natural honey, will shrink its purchases of the commodity in the face of rising prices, the company’s president says. Yang Saing Koma said the group would not reach its goal of buying 7,000 ...

Community activists and conservationists commemorating slain environment activist Chut Wutty on the weekend used the occasion to shed light on what they allege are the shadowy practices of a logging company in the southwestern Cardamom forests. Activists amongst the hundreds of people who travelled to Koh ...

Srey ambel district, Koh Kong province – A roadblock by locals in a long-running land dispute with CPP Senator Ly Yong Phat petered out after several hours in the dying rain on Saturday without the protesters winning any concessions from either the senator’s firm or ...

In order to pacify concerns that filling in Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak lake would lead to flooding, it was claimed by officials that 10 hectares of the 90-hectare lake would be preserved to absorb heavy rainfall. Now, four years after sand began streaming into Boeng Kak, ...

Mondol Seima district, Koh Kong province – It was a gesture the late conservationist and outspoken anti-logging activist would have appreciated. After blessing the site where Chut Wutty was shot dead just over two weeks ago under still mysterious circumstances in this remote patch of the ...

One of the first things UN Special Rapporteur Surya Subedi did on his week-long fact-finding mission in Cambodia was visit the grave of slain environmentalist Chut Wutty. It wasn’t on the itinerary, but Subedi, rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Cambodia, said he wanted ...

Rainfall during this year’s dry season and fewer farmers cultivating tobacco has resulted in a shortage of raw tobacco and a steep price increase, industry officials and farmers said yesterday. Tola Ponlu, head of corporate and regulatory affairs at British American Tobacco (BAT) in Phnom Penh, ...

Forestry Administration officials reportedly blocked vehicles in three provinces from travelling to Koh Kong town yesterday on their way to the site where prominent environmental activist Chut Wutty was shot last month. But hundreds of others from six provinces in a convoy of 27 vans made it ...

More than 600 people, including 50 Buddhist monks, who have been affected by illegal logging across the country arrived in Koh Kong province yesterday ahead of a memorial service to be held today at the site where well-known forestry activist Chut Wutty was shot dead ...

Hundreds of would-be illegal loggers have been stopped this year by provincial authorities in Preah Vihear, Oddar Meanchey and Banteay Meanchey who have stopped them from crossing the border into Thailand, where Thai soldiers have killed 17 Cambodians so far this year. In Preah Vihear alone, ...

Claims on Cambodia’s six biggest insurance companies declined year on year by more than 90 per cent in the first quarter of 2012, data from the General Insurance Association of Cambodia (GIAC) shows. The value of claims in 2011 was raised by fires that gutted two ...