Government Drops Challenge to Official Forest Cover Figure

The Forestry Administration on Thursday said it could not comment on the accuracy of new, satellite-generated maps that suggest the government has been vastly overstating the country’s forest cover. Open Development Cambodia, an open data website, on Wednesday published a series of maps using U.S. satellite data indicating that only 46.3 percent of the country’s land mass was currently covered by forest and that the rate of deforestation was accelerating. In 2010, the last time the government released its own figures, it said that roughly 57 percent of Cambodia’s land was covered by forest. Since then, it has also said that the country was well on its way to its goal of 60 percent forest cover by 2015. On Thursday, Meas Makara, the Forestry Administration’s director of forest management and community forests, said he could not tell whether Open Development’s figures were right because the government was in the midst of its latest forest cover assessment, to be finished by 2015. He also declined to say whether the government believed its 2010 forest cover figure was still roughly accurate. … Mr. Makara declined to elaborate much on the new government assessment. He said it would differentiate between natural forest, rubber plantations and other trees but that all of these would count as forest cover. … Besides credibly challenging the government’s forest cover figures, Open Development’s new maps show a significant loss of cover since 1973, from 72.1 percent to the 46.3 percent today, with most of it occurring after 2000. …

 Zsombor Peter
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/government-drops-challenge-to-official-forest-cover-figure-49264/