Forests and forestry

The Prey Lang Community Network yesterday delivered a letter to authorities in Kampong Thom province’s Sandan district calling for the postponement of a Vietnamese concessionaire’s forest clearing and notifying authorities of their intention to deliver a lawsuit to the provincial hall tomorrow, network activists said. According ...

Companies that invest in land and resources in emerging economies risk financial and public relations disasters if local inhabitants feel they are getting ripped off, consultants warned in a report last week. The report was released by a group known as the Munden Project The ...

Yong Yim’s voice rises to a high-pitched quiver when she talks about a planned dam in the Areng Valley that would inundate land her family has inhabited for hundreds of years to form what amounts to a giant battery. Now they are staring at ...

Cambodia’s largest opposition party has expressed concern that China’s investment in the country is heavily skewed towards exploiting natural resources, wreaking havoc on the environment. China is Cambodia’s largest investor by a wide margin, having poured U.S. $9.7 billion into the country over the past 18 ...

The government has slashed about 250,000 hectares of land from 79 economic land concessions (ELCs), forest concessions and wildlife protection concessions and will return it, replete with land titles, to “poor people”, January’s Royal Book says. The publication, issued on January 17 and obtained yesterday, says ...

Pursat Provincial Court yesterday sentenced a military official, Poung Puthearith, to two years in jail – suspended to six months – on charges of threatening and obstructing the works of a forestry official, a court official said. Puthearith was arrested by the Anti-Corruption Unit ...

Villagers facing relocation from the site of the planned Lower Sesan 2 dam in Stung Treng province were told last week that they would be moved 15 kilometres from the river they rely on for fishing, a commune chief said yesterday. Seak Mekong, commune chief in ...

In what’s believed to be an unprecedented move, the Ratanakkiri Provincial Court has ordered two companies holding economic land concessions to face court questioning on accusations of illegal logging and land clearing. Deputy prosecutor Ros Saram said he summonsed Vietnamese-owned Company 72 last week and will ...

Representatives of a massive hydropower dam project in Stung Treng province’s Sesan district approached local authorities late last month informing them that the government had granted the company permission to clear 36,000 hec­tares of land for a reservoir, officials said on Sunday. The 400-megawatt Lower Se­san ...

Two ethnic Banong communities in Mondolkiri province’s Keo Seima district have completed the final stage in the process to receive rare collective property titles, and are set to receive ownership documents early next month, an official at the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) said. Kan Vibol, ...

China’s demand for natural resources is being felt in a big way in Cambodia. Illegal logging and economic land concessions are threatening Cambodia’s dwindling forests, which now echo the sound of chainsaws. Prey Lang forest — an eight-hour journey north and east of the capital, Phnom Penh ...

Laws protecting ethnic minorities’ communal land rights are good, but their implementation has a long way to go, said participants in a forum of minorities from Mondulkiri and Kratie provinces yesterday. After July’s parliamentary elections, legislators should take the opportunity of a newly constituted government to ...

More than 100 villagers in Preah Vihear province have accused a group of Chinese-owned sugar plantations of encroaching on their farms and community forests since mid-2012 and say they are still waiting for a resolution. Sen Som, a rice farmer in Chheb district, said Heng Rui ...

Ethnic Bunong villagers living in Mondolkiri province’s Pech Chreada district have sent a petition to the Ministry of Land Management, urging the government to refrain from issuing them private land titles, local officials said yesterday. This way they may instead to eligible for a communal title ...

Senior members of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF) yesterday seized about a tonne of luxury rosewood near the house of a two-star general in the Choam Ksan district of Preah Vihear province after a night hunting for illegal smuggling. General Ngeth Chanthon, deputy general of ...

Members of the Prey Lang Community Network yesterday called on the government to approve a forest preservation sub-decree that has been in draft form since 2011. Hoeun Sopheap, representative of the Kampong Thom provincial Prey Lang community, said the sub-decree would help protect the biodiversity of ...

A local conservation group yesterday called for several changes to a draft sub-decree meant to turn Cambodia’s Prey Long Forest into a protected area, concerned it could end up harming, rather than conserving, the forest. ...

The Kompong Thom Provincial Court yesterday charged two men with illegally logging 65 pieces of rosewood, the courts director Pen Sarat, said. Provincial police said the two 19 year old men were arrested Saturday morning while transporting about 1 105 kg of rosewood in Prasat ...

More than 8,000 hectares of land was cut from economic and forest land concessions owned by some of the country’s biggest tycoons and awarded to villagers last month, according to documents from the Council of Ministers. Four sub-decrees signed by Prime Minister Hun Sen order that ...

Phnom Penh Municipal Court yesterday sentenced 28 people – including several government officials – to between two and five years in jail on charges of clearing state-protected flooded mangrove forest in Kampong Thom province in July of 2012. Presiding Judge Keo Mony said that Cheath Sivutha, ...

During a joint investigation with police and military police last week, the Forestry Administration found evidence of large-scale illegal logging by the Vietnamese owners of a rubber concession in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadaw district, officials said yesterday. ...

A new tourist promenade is to open in the heart of Phnom Penh’s old French quarter. Scheduled for a February opening, the tourist walk zone will provide an outdoor leisure area on street 13 that will be closed to cars and motorbikes on weekends from ...

For the second time, an investigating judge at Ratanakirri Provincial Court has closed the investigation into the murder of Virakchun Khmer newspaper journalist Hang Serei Oudom. Odom was found dead in the trunk of his car. The murder happened only days after an article about ...

A Vietnamese rubber company in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadaw district yesterday agreed to pay $4,000 in compensation to an ethnic Jarai community whose traditional graveyard was bulldozed by the firm last week, local officials said. During a meeting at the Paknhai commune police station, representatives of the ...