Reforestry Claim ‘A Stretch’
The government reforested 80,693 hectares of land between 2008 and 2012 as part of its efforts to combat deforestation, a recent agriculture ministry report says, but these seemingly impressive statistics were reached by counting rubber trees and other agricultural crops as adequate replacements for forests. The replanting also coincided with the most accelerated period of deforestation in the past four decades. Between 2009 and 2013, total forest cover decreased from 60.18 per cent to 46.33 per cent, according to satellite maps released in December by Open Development Cambodia (ODC) that were subsequently repudiated by the ministry. … According to the report released by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries late last month, reforestation in 70,095 hectares of the total area over the five-year period was by private firms granted economic land concessions, with the rest done by the forestry administration, the army and citizens on the annual “forestry day”. Organisations such as ODC that have presented data showing monumental forest loss in Cambodia have failed to mention the increase in agricultural crops on deforested land, making their reports one-sided, said Thorn Sarath, a director at the Agriculture Ministry’s Forestry Administration department. … But conservationists like Marcus Hardtke, program coordinator for German conservation group ARA, said that agricultural crops cannot possibly be deemed as having replaced evergreen forest. … In November, a University of Maryland study found that about seven per cent of Cambodia’s forests had been logged in the past 12 years. Another investigation carried out by the Regional Community Forestry Training Center showed that Cambodia had lost 420,000 hectares of forest between 2002 and 2012. … The statement also says that differing definitions of what constitutes a forest make any such analysis problematic, with the ODC hence overstating the scale of deforestation in the Kingdom. … “We would like to emphasise that these kinds of maps are meant to show trends; the limitations of the satellite images themselves will always lead to some variation in interpretation … that said, the most important overall trend, which is the loss of dense/old growth forest, is clear from the satellite images,” he [ODC director Thy Try] wrote in an email. …
May Titthara and Kevin Ponniah
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/reforestry-claim-%E2%80%98-stretch%E2%80%99
