បរិស្ថាន និងធនធានធម្មជាតិ
Complaint Filed as Anti-Flooding Project Begins
As dignitaries marked the groundbreaking of a project to improve Phnom Penh’s defenses against flooding yesterday, a complaint had already been filed against the project’s contractor for impeding a public road. The Japanese government is putting $46 million into a new phase of the city’s flood ...
Police to ‘monitor’ activists
Kampong Thom province Police and soldiers have been deployed to Prey Lang forest to monitor the activities of about 500 villagers patrolling for illegal loggers, a police official said yesterday. The police and military officers gathered along a road leading to the CRCK rubber company, which has ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012032755262/National-news/police-to-monitor-activists.html
Authorities nab loggers at border
Cambodia border police arrested 12 people last week who attempted to cross illegally from Preah Vihear province into Thailand to log rosewood, officials said yesterday. .. ...
Blind eye to forest's plight
Rangers paid by an internationally funded conservation organisation have been directly profiting for years from the very trade they are supposed to be preventing in southwest Cambodia, documents obtained by the Post allege. Former Conservation International (CI) staff members say when they spoke up about endemic ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012032655247/National-news/blind-eye-to-forests-plight.html
One Killed and One Injured While Logging Across Borders
One man was killed and one injured in two separate shooting incidents that took place last week at the borders with Thailand and Laos, officials said yesterday. In both cases, the Cambodians are believed to have been shot while illegally logging highly coveted luxury rosewood in ...
Prey Lang villagers on patrol
Kampong Thom province About 500 frustrated villagers, citing the authorities’ inaction as their motivation, rode some 250 motorbikes into Prey Lang forest over the weekend in yet another effort to combat illegal logging they say is decimating the area. The villagers from four provinces surrounding Prey Lang ...
Laos logging incident sees man shot, injured
A Cambodian man was injured last week after Lao authorities shot him while he was illegally logging rosewood in Laos’ Champasak district, near Stung Treng province, authorities said yesterday. Siem Pang district police chief Var Sophan told the Post yesterday that 27-year-old Sarin Da was accompanied ...
Drugs: our man in Cambodia
The inquiry that targeted Hun To, dubbed Operation Illipango, investigated the shipment of heroin into Australia from Cambodia in loads of timber. Hun To, a nephew of Prime Minister Hun Sen, is a powerful and feared figure in Cambodia. He was once considered a close business ...
http://www.theage.com.au/national/investigations/drugs-our-man-in-cambodia-20120325-1vsiz.html
Environment Minister Denies Hardship at Tourism Project
The Minister of Environment has countered a rights worker’s claim that villagers relocated to make way for a Chinese-backed mega-tourism project in Koh Kong province lack proper access to medical care. About 1,100 families have been forcibly evicted from their coastal villages in Botum Sakor National ...
Cambodia Surges Full-Speed Ahead With Land Concessions
The government has already granted roughly 300,000 hectares in economic land concessions (ELC) so far this year, according to data released by a local rights group yesterday. The figure, which amounts to 40 percent of the total land concessions granted in all of 2011, has ...
Project to curb floods
The Phnom Penh municipality is set to begin contruction on Monday for a project funded by the Japanese government, in order to improve both the infastructure of the city’s drainage system and its capability to handle flood water. ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012032255192/National-news/project-to-curb-floods.html
Mondolkiri Minority Group Granted Communal Land Title
Residents of an ethnic minority village in Mondolkiri’s Seima Protected Forest on Monday became the first community in the province to receive a communal land title, land management officials said yesterday. About 500 indigenous Bunong families from Andoung Kraloeng village in O’Reang district’s Sen Monorom commune ...
Fight Illegal Logging From Top, World Bank Says
Echoing longstanding calls from conservation groups, the World Bank says in a new report today that governments need to look past low-level criminals to tackle illegal logging and to follow the money the illicit trade generates instead. That trade of illegal logging generates up to $15 ...
Laos Sets Free Seven Cambodians; 16 Waiting
Laos yesterday released seven of 23 Cambodians who have been apprehended across the border since the start of the year on suspicions of illegal logging, according to a military and district official. ...
Families face eviction from Pineapple Island
One of five families facing eviction from their island home off the coast of Koh Kong province has written to the provincial governor, urging him to intervene to stop a Chinese company developing their land. “If the companies want to take over villagers’ land, they ...
23,000 Hectares of Land Concessions Approved
The government last month granted four companies a total 23,000 hectares of land concessions for agro-industry projects and a special economic zone (SEZ), according to human rights groups, which said it obtained the information from government documents. An additional 500 hectares inside a wildlife sanctuary were ...
Drought woes for Kampong Thom farmers
Agricultural officials and farmers in Kampong Thom province are increasingly worried about the adverse effect that a severe drought is having on more than 200 hectares of rice crops. director of the provincial agricultural department, told the Post yesterday that due to an unusually low amount ...
Gov’t Asks UN to Help Prepare for Future Disasters
Foreign Affairs Minister Hor Namhong yesterday asked the UN’s visiting head of humanitarian affairs for extra support in preparing for future natural disasters, according to ministry spokesman Koy Kuong. ...
Officials Seize 100 Cubic Meters of Luxury Wood
Forestry officials in Ratanakkiri province, along with provincial officials, have carried out several operations in three districts this month that netted about 100 cubic meters of various types of luxury wood, but no suspects were arrested, officials said yesterday. ...
Legislation floated: Managing disasters on UN agenda
The Cambodian government floated the possibility of legislation to help clarify the roles of different actors involved in disaster management yesterday, the UN humanitarian chief said. ...
Officials Again Seize Timber In Kratie Without Any Arrests
For the second time in a month, Forestry Administration officials in Kratie province’s Snuol district have found hundreds of cubic meters of first-grade wood that had been smuggled to a site near the tributary of the Prek Pao river, officials said yesterday. As in previous wood ...
Villagers to police logging in Prey Lang
More than 600 villagers from four provinces and civil society organisation officials would embark on the largest community crackdown yet on the “anarchic logging” of Prey Lang forest in Kampong Thom, representatives said yesterday. ...
Torrential storm hits 3 provinces; 1 killed
One woman was killed, several villagers injured and more than 80 houses destroyed or badly damaged by storms that swept through the provinces of Siem Reap, Banteay Meanchey and Mondulkiri over the weekend, provincial officials said yesterday. “I have never seen this kind of storm ...
As Plans for Dam Gain Traction, Villagers Balk
For hundreds of years, the ancestors of Vam Sovann have lived in Koh Kong province’s remote Araeng valley. Some 70 km from the nearest national road, Mr. Sovann’s village has no electricity or phone coverage, no paved roads or running water; instead, it has access ...