Concessions Not for Logging, Hun Sen Says
Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday told senior officials to stop investors from using land concessions as a pretext for logging and to discuss the possibility of reducing the amount of time such concessions can last. The government placed a moratorium on logging concessions in 2002 to stem the clear-cutting of the country’s forests. But environmental protection groups accuse the government of knowingly granting other sorts of land concessions to firms that fully intend to log the area. “We have to decide about the land concessions since there are no land concessions, with 5,000 hectares that do not have trees. There are forests that we have to protect,” Mr. Hun Sen said at the Agriculture Ministry’s annual conference at Phnom Penh’s Royal University of Agriculture, directing his words at the ministries of Agriculture, Environment, Justice and Land Management. …
