News

A fisheries official accused of involvement in the clearing of an area of protected flooded forest in Kampong Thom province in July was questioned at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court yesterday. Korn Chanseiha, chief of the Fisheries Administration’s Stong district office, is one of about 20 officials ...

Cambodia expects to gain money from carbon credit next year and it will take their money to develop forest community to support sustainable development, officials said this week. An environmental officials said: Cambodia will likely get money from carbon credit through selling carbon credit to foreign ...

Villagers who claim their patrols last week uncovered criminal activity in Prey Lang forest presented the government yesterday with a list of 15 people they say are illegally logging in the area. Reoun Sopheap, a representative of about 100 villagers from Kampong Thom province’s Sandan district, ...

Villagers who have spent recent days patrolling Prey Lang forest would file a complaint to the prime minister alleging government officials and private companies are clearing parts of the forest, a spokesman said yesterday. The 70-strong citizen patrol team who scoured the forest this week ...

An expedition to expose illegal logging uncovered about 50 hectares of clear-felled forest yesterday that activists from the Prey Lang Community Network have filmed and photographed to lobby government officials, a group representative said. Chum Yin said more than 60 villagers had traveled to seven villages ...

Banteay Ampil district, Oddar Meanchey province – The families of Beng commune have new neighbors: a battalion of Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF) soldiers building a military base inside one of 13 pockets across the province aiming to be the first forest-based carbon trading scheme ...

New satellite images of Oddar Meanchey province promise to help settle wildly conflicting deforestation estimates inside a 64,000-hectare area, which is set to anchor the country’s first forest-based carbon trading scheme. With the project potentially ready to sell carbon credits to foreign firms in a matter ...

An estimated 600 people will travel to parts of the Cardamom Mountains in Koh Kong province to investigate illegal logging and commemorate the death of slain environment activist Chut Wutty tomorrow. Communities from eight provinces that have been affected by deforestation will travel to Koh Kong ...

An estimated 600 people who say their livelihoods have been affected by illegal logging and deforestation across the country are scheduled to gather in Koh Kong province on Friday at the site where environmental activist Chut Wutty was shot dead on April 26. The group will ...

The U.N.’s human rights envoy to Cambodia, Surya Subedi, was in Ratanakkiri province yesterday as part of his weeklong visit to the country to investigate the impact land concessions have on local communities. Some rights groups have singled out land concessions as the premier human rights ...

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 ...

Workers who were seen last week clearing forestland in Stung Treng province in preparation for the construction of the 400-megawatt Lower Sesan 2 dam have stopped their work after receiving an order to do so by the district governor, officials said yesterday. Sesan district governor Bou ...

Cambodia has one of the world’s highest rates of deforestation, ranking ninth among 180 countries in terms of forest loss during the past decade, according to a new study, which said that economic land concessions and illegal logging were the primary cause for the demise ...

A pair of Sandan district villagers who participated in last week’s Prey Lang forest protest against illegal logging, and two of the NGO workers who monitored them, were facing accusations of incitement and destruction of property in complaints filed against them in the provincial court, ...

After walking and camping in the jungle for more than a week, Tha Sros and hundreds of other villagers finally reached the winding red dirt road that lead to the rubber plantation of Vietnamese-owned CRCK company, which has cleared a vast 6,000-hectare swathe out of ...

According to the Copenhagen Accord hosted in Denmark, developed countries had to provide US$ 30 billion for 2009-2012 to kick start emissions reduction measures for the less-developed countries and promised to offer US$ 100 billion for long term finance a year by 2020. “Cambodia needs approximately ...

Opposition party lawmaker Son Chhay has sent a letter to Deputy Prime Minister Sok An asking for the immediate suspension of a Vietnamese rubber plantation in the endangered Prey Long forest, accusing the firm of illegal deforestation. In the letter dated Wednesday, Mr Chhay also asked ...

Authorities in Phnom Penh briefly detained about 100 villagers yesterday who were distributing leaflets to raise awareness of the ongoing destruction of Prey Long, one of Cambodia’s largest remaining primary forests. The leaflet distributors had their materials confiscated and were escorted to six commune offices ...

More than one hundred villagers dressed as the forest people from the hit film “Avatar” protested in the Cambodian capital Thursday against the destruction of the country’s Prey Lang forestThey say the forest, which is a source of livelihood for some 200,000 mainly indigenous people, ...

In Svay Rieng province villagers are in their fourth day of protests after authorities refused to meet with them to discuss a land concession that Metapheap Company has received in order to open a rubber plantation. The company was granted a 1,230 hectare land concession ...