Environment and natural resources

Hundreds of students attending a forum yesterday on plans of regional governments to develop hydropower dams on the Mekong River expressed concern over the river’s future, and they urged the governments to abandon the projects or proceed with caution. The forum in Phnom Penh was the ...

Cambodia has one of the world’s highest rates of deforestation, ranking ninth among 180 countries in terms of forest loss during the past decade, according to a new study, which said that economic land concessions and illegal logging were the primary cause for the demise ...

Cambodia’s 2012 budget passed through the National Assembly yesterday unopposed, without a single question asked and no parliamentary debate in a situation the government, opposition and observers all said was unfortunate. It took just over three hours for the law to be passed, 86 to 0, ...

Three Oddar Meanchey province villagers were shot to death on Monday while logging on the Thai-Cambodian border, officials said yesterday, bringing the total number of border killings so far this year to 14 and drawing concern from human rights groups over the continuing bloodshed around ...

Forestry Administration officials yesterday said they confiscated 1.34 cubic meters of smuggled rosewood from RCAF soldiers even after a lieutenant colonel held a pistol to one of their heads in the hope of scaring them off. Tea Kimsoth, head of the administration’s Siem Reap cantonment, said ...

Devastating floods as well as the economic slowdown in Europe and the US have prompted the World Bank to lower its outlook for Cambodia’s economic growth this year to 6 percent, down from a previous projection of 6.8 percent. In its economic update for the region ...

Although floodwaters are receding, an unknown number of villages in several provinces remain accessible only by boat, and the extent of the damage has yet to be fully assessed, according to aid workers and the latest “situation update” from the United Nations Disaster Management Team. “In ...

The government has granted more than 7 million hectares of land to private companies through concessions since 2008, with 222 private companies claiming more than 2 million hectares alone in economic land concessions, rights group Adhoc said yesterday. Ouch Leng, head of Adhoc’s land program, said ...

A 54-year-old man in Kratie province’s Snuol district was crushed to death under trees felled on Tuesday morning by bulldozers belonging to Vietnamese rubber company Dy Nam, an official said. District governor Iv Saphum said that Khem Kan, a representative of 77 families involved in a ...

All families evacuated during the worst floods Cambodia has seen in more than a decade have now returned home, the floodwaters have receded and relief efforts are coming to a close, officials said yesterday. Two hundred and fifty people, at least half of them children, died ...

An official with the Fisheries Administration predicted yesterday that the annual fish catch would increase this year by about 20 percent over last year, saying that recent efforts to reduce illegal fishing practices around the Tonle Sap lake had contributed to the jump ...

Kompong Thom provincial officials denied a media report yesterday that authorities had filed a legal complaint against two villagers and two human rights workers who campaigned in the province last week to demand protection for Prey Long forest ...

Cambodia plans to spend nearly US$200 million to rebuild after the worst floods in a decade hit the country in September and October. The floods require an immediate response, Minister of Economy and Finance Keat Chhon said yesterday at a meeting of the Council for the ...

A pair of Sandan district villagers who participated in last week’s Prey Lang forest protest against illegal logging, and two of the NGO workers who monitored them, were facing accusations of incitement and destruction of property in complaints filed against them in the provincial court, ...

Two men were arrested Monday in Kompong Thom province for illegally transporting nearly half a cubic meter of valuable rosewood, said a forestry official ...

Cambodia’s Ministry of Environment told a Japanese oil company yesterday to better define the location of its initial onshore operations given the potential impact on the local population and environment. The Ministry of Environment has required Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation to specify where ...

A Ratanakkiri Provincial Court prosecutor yesterday summoned an ethnic minority Jarai man in O’Yadav district to explain to the court his allegations that local authorities had threatened to kill him for exposing a land-sale corruption racket. Romas Chhvang, 45, filed a complaint to the court at ...

A representative of environmental group International Rivers said yesterday that if the Laos government were to move forward with a controversial dam project, it would violate the 1995 Mekong Agreement. “Moving forward with the dam would be against international law,” said Ame Trandem, Sountheast Asia program ...

Adding to a spate of similar incidents since October, Thai soldiers fired on a group of Cambodians who had illegally entered Thailand from Oddar Meanchey province on Saturday looking to log valuable rosewood trees and shot one in the hand, a provincial official said yesterday ...

A consulting firm commissioned by the Lao government to prepare a report on the controversial US$3.8 billion Xayaburi dam project has rejected claims by environmentalists that their assessment was “biased” due partly to existing ties with a project backer. On Wednesday, conservation group International Rivers claimed ...

The US firm marketing what will likely be the first forest-based carbon trading scheme in Cambodia has bought $900,000 worth of political risk insurance to back the project, according to a media report. ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen on Monday ordered Agriculture Minister Chan Sarun to explain irregularities that have taken place in the bidding process for licenses to operate fishing lots around the Tonle Sap lake. The order was carried out after Mr Hun Sen received a report from ...

After walking and camping in the jungle for more than a week, Tha Sros and hundreds of other villagers finally reached the winding red dirt road that lead to the rubber plantation of Vietnamese-owned CRCK company, which has cleared a vast 6,000-hectare swathe out of ...

Eight Cambodian suspected of illegally logging along the Thai-Cambodian border have been shot dead by Thai soldiers, and three others have been wounded in the month of October alone, human rights workers and officials said Friday. The latest figure brings the death toll so far this ...