News

The Ministry of Environment said yesterday that a recently constructed water-treatment facility at the Manhattan Special Economic Zone in Svay Rieng is unable to deal with most of the polluted water generated by factories at the site, and that 70 per cent was being dumped ...

The US Army Corp of Engineers is providing Cambodia with new tools to understand its growing groundwater shortage. Last week, the Ministry of Environment, US Army Corp of Engineers and National Council for Sustainable Development hosted a three-day technical exchange on groundwater modelling. ...

Cambodia’s first large-scale private-sector sale of carbon credits was finalised yesterday, with conservationists predicting that it could pave the way for more public-private partnerships, making millions of dollars of funding available for local carbon-based initiatives. US entertainment giant Walt Disney Company has officially purchased $2.6 ...

A senior environment official yesterday alleged that the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party and human rights groups should shoulder much of the blame for the destruction of the country’s protected areas. ...

UNESCO and the ministries of Tourism and Environment this weekend will launch a campaign aimed at ridding the capital of the plastic waste currently choking its waterways and piling up in its landfills.The campaign, starting on Friday, will seek to educate Cambodians about how to ...

The Ministry of Environment has called on local authorities in Pailin province to find a new location for a 34-hectare dumpsite currently planned for a protected forest.Environment Minister Say Sam Al, who led a team to inspect the site on October 3, wrote to Pailin ...

Cambodia’s government and civil society yesterday expressed worry over the lack of progress on finalising the draft text for an international climate change treaty set to be adopted at UN climate talks in Paris (COP 21) after the final round of negotiations concluded in Bonn, ...

Doubts have been cast on long-standing plans for a 34-hectare dumpsite in Pailin’s Samlot Protected Forest following an inspection by the environment minister on Saturday. Ministry spokesman Sao Sopheap yesterday said that following the inspection, the minister has called for further research before the project ...

Rights group Licadho has called on the government to make available statistics on the full extent of economic land concessions (ELCs) in response to data collected by the organisation over five years. ...

Senior officials from the Environment Ministry have called on the developed world to provide more assistance in the battle against climate change, which they said Cambodia is working hard to address. ...

The government yesterday slashed the lifespans of 12 economic land concessions (ELC) – by half in some cases – as it continued to implement a new policy capping ELC leases at 50 years. ...

National parks and other protected areas are being gutted at a rapid rate in Stung Treng and Ratanakkiri by private business interests, among them the powerful Try Pheap Group, a report launched yesterday claims, though authorities have disputed certain figures.The report, titled Logs and Patronage: ...

The Environment Ministry in cooperation with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) yesterday launched a $5 million, five-year plan to mitigate the effects of climate change on rural communities in four Cambodian provinces. ...

NGOs yesterday called on the government to make funds for combating the effects of climate change available to local governments, rather than concentrating them at the national level. ...

The government has declared leases on plantations will be limited to 50 years, slashing the length of some existing concessions in half, though neither ministry responsible for overseeing the move would confirm the legal basis for doing so.The decision was announced in a press release ...

The Ministry of Environment said it is working to make eco-friendly and green technologies tax-free, in order to reduce the cost barriers associated with importing and implementing these technologies, such as the use of solar panels. Speaking at EuroCham’s Green Business Forum in Phnom Penh, Environment ...

The Cambodian government earned about $80 million leasing economic land concessions and forests to private companies over the last three years, according to a report from the Ministry of Economy and Finance released last week. The January report, signed by Prime Minister Hun Sen, found that ...

Cambodia should urgently disclose all information about land ownership and rethink its “wholesale sell-off” of the country’s natural resources, a local rights group said yesterday. The call to release information about Cambodia’s land sector, including a declaration of revenues, came as Licadho released an analysis of ...

The Ministry of Environment is close to finalising a draft environmental impact analysis (EIA) law for development projects, but NGOs and civil society groups raised concerns that the draft law, as it stands, prevents indigenous people who live on the land from opposing such projects. Speaking ...

The Ministry of Environment is set to join the Ministry of Labour in the monitoring of garment factory workplaces, after creating a working group that will probe the environmental safety of all plants in Cambodia. At a press conference at the ministry yesterday, Minister of Environment ...

Fourteen companies have been added to a Ministry of Environment watchlist for purportedly failing to live up to their investment promises. The companies include firms owned by some of the country’s wealthiest and most politically connected land barons, such as Mong Reththy and Sok Kong. ...

Cambodia is particularly at risk from man-made climate change due to its dependence on agriculture and its geography, Minister of Environment Say Sam Al said yesterday. The minister, speaking at a workshop marking 20 years of meetings on the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said ...

The government will set up a $5 million fund to allow Cambodia’s 26 provinces and municipalities to take responsibility for waste management in their cities, it was announced recently. With a focus on garbage management, the decentralisation initiative, revealed at a two-day workshop in Phnom Penh ...

Environment Ministry officials on Thursday found a cache of more than 400 pieces of illegally logged first-grade wood in Ratanakkiri province’s Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary, which the ministry oversees, and suspect officers from a nearby military police base of being involved. Thin Ngoal, the sanctuary’s deputy director, ...