Despite steady economic growth in recent years, Cambodia remains one of the least-developed countries in the Asia-Pacific region and faces the challenge of diversifying its economy and moving up the production value chain, the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) said in its annual report... continue
Mondolkiri and Kompong Thom provinces could suffer some of the most extreme effects of climate change in the Lower Mekong Basin region, such as a high incidence of flash floods and droughts by 2050, according to a new study.
Analyzing temperature and rainfall from 84 provinces in the Mekong region-which includes Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam- the study identifies Mondolkiri as a “primary priority hotspot” for vulnerability for climate change. …
“Reduced rice and cassava yields are a threat to food security and health, as well as placing more pressure on exploitation of [non-timber forest products] for food. Reduced cassava yields would also reduce livestock feed availability,” the study found.
Kompong Thom will experience an 18 percent increase in precipitation during the wet season, while the maximum temperatures will increase by 4 degrees. …
To counteract these effects the government and the affected communities should look into diversifying their crops, such as planting heat-tolerant or drought tolerant varieties, the study says.
Climate change will have a significant effect on major industrial and food crops in the Lower Mekong basin countries of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, says a new study.
The study, conducted by the Mekong Adaptation and Resilience to Climate Change Project for the U.S. Agency for International Development, marks the first step of the project’s aim to help communities in the four countries to develop local climate change adaptation assessments and action plans.
Considered one of the most fertile areas of Southeast Asia, the Mekong basin is known for its production of rice and maize. About 70 percent of the basin’s population of 60 million people earns a living as farmers and fishers. …
Aside from the looming danger of climate change, plans to build a series of mega-dams across the river to generate electricity also pose a threat to the Mekong countries, experts say. …
“By blocking the transport of sediment, the dams will contribute to even greater erosion in the fertile Mekong Delta, which is already threatened by increasing saltwater intrusion as a result of rising sea levels,” Aviva Imhof, [International Rivers] group’s campaigns director told Voice of America.
A week after British researchers released a study warning that the nation’s grasslands would soon be lost if drastic action was not taken to protect them, some agricultural experts have called for moderation, noting that the intensive rice cultivation blamed for the grasslands’ destruction is critical to the nation’s developing commercial rice sector. …
Dr Volker Kleinhenz, an agricultural consultant who has researched rice cultivation in the Kingdom extensively, called the area around the Tonle Sap, “exceptional” because of the readily available source of water for irrigation.
“Double-cropping can double annual yields. Furthermore, the yields and quality of dry-season rice are usually better than that of wet-season rice, predisposing this crop for export,” he said. …
Since 2005, the year researchers say intensive rice cultivation became the leading cause of destruction of the grasslands, rice exports have increased exponentially – from 5,971 tonnes in 2005 to 192,666 tonnes last year – according to statistics from the Ministry of Economy and Finance.
Around half of Cambodia’s tropical flooded grasslands have been lost in just 10 years according to new research from the University of East Anglia. The seasonally flooded grasslands around the Tonle Sap, Southeast Asia’s largest freshwater lake, are of great importance for biodiversity and a refuge for 11 globally-threatened bird species, including the Bengal Florican. They are also a vital fishing, grazing, and traditional rice farming resource for around 1.1 million people. …
The grassland area spanned 3349 km² in 1995, but by 2005 it had been reduced to just 1817 km² – a loss of 46 per cent.
Despite conservation efforts in some areas, it has continued to shrink rapidly since, with a further 19 per cent lost in four years (2005-2009) from the key remaining grassland area in the southeast of the Tonle Sap floodplain.
Factors include intensive commercial rice farming with construction of irrigation channels, which is often illegal. Some areas have also been lost to scrubland where traditional, low-intensity agricultural activity has been abandoned. …
Exports of Cambodian fish and shellfish products reached 1,618 tonnes last year, worth $3.5 million, a 16 per cent increase from 1,391 tonnes in 2011, according to figures from the Ministry of Commerce.
“A major share of the total exports last year was from saltwater fish species and some other processing products,” said Khuon Savuth, director of the Camcontrol department at the Ministry of Commerce. …
Om Savath, executive director of Cambodia’s Fish Action Coalition Team, questioned the ministry’s numbers, saying the 2012’s freshwater fish yield was unlikely to eclipse 2011 because of environmental changes, an increase in illegal fishing and a water level about 2.7 metres lower than in 2011. …
“When the level of water is low, the water gets dirty and doesn’t flow to areas where fish can reproduce.” …
Cambodian officials in provinces bordering Thailand said the price of Cambodian corn would increase as a result of a reduced supply and a new Thai government policy of importing more corn for animal processing.
The Bangkok Post reported on Tuesday that the Thai cabinet approved the import of 450,000 tonnes of tariff-free maize from Cambodia and Laos.
Cambodian farmers, however, greeted the new policy warily, expressing doubts as to the effectiveness of the price raise. …
According to a report by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Cambodian farmers planted 184,872 hectares of corn across the country and cultivated about 770,860 tonnes of corn in 2012, with Battambang, Preah Vihear, Kandal, Kampong Cham, Pailin, Banteay Meanchey and Pursat provinces leading in production. …
Data from the Ministry of Commerce showed that Cambodia’s total corn exports dropped 42.21 per cent to 20,443.66 tonnes in 2012 from 35,381.63 tonnes in 2011.
Rulling party Senator Ly Yong Phat’s Phnom Penh Sugar Company announced yesterday that it had amended its hiring policy to forbid contractors from employing children, while at the same time, opposition parliamentarian Mu Sochua made public her plans to visit the company to investigate its labour practices.
According to a copy of a January 9 internal memo provided by the company – and issued five days after an article was published in the Post detailing the widespread use of child labour at the company’s Kampong Speu sugarcane plantation – the company warned contractors responsible for hiring plantation labourers that anyone caught hiring persons under the age of 18 would be fined 50,000 riel ($12.50) on their first offence, and have their contract terminated on their second. …
In an interview yesterday, she said that she was planning a trip to Europe to address the issue of so-called “blood sugar” with EU parliamentarians, and stressed that the “company cannot just be let off the hook because of this internal memo”, calling the very use of contractors a major problem. …
Despite attention from Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and official development assistance, farmers are by far the largest source of investment in agriculture, the State of Food and Agriculture 2012 report by the Food and Agriculture Organization published last week said.
Farmers in low and middle income countries invest more than US$170 billion annually, about $150 per farmer, in their farms, the report said. This is three times as much as all other sources of investment combined, four times the size of the public sector’s contribution and more than 50 times the size of official development assistance to these countries, the report said. …
Cambodia has been featured as a case study in a new report launched by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) focusing on the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) in developing nations’ agricultural sectors.
While the report acknowledges the positive effects of FDI in terms of job creation and infrastructure development within local communities, it concludes that in the Cambodian context, the costs of FDI projects tend to outweigh the benefits. …
While the global economic crisis weakened the ability of Cambodian households to purchase food, the government’s focus on agricultural production and other policies have since helped alleviate food insecurity in the country, the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development said in a new report.
Between June 2007 and June 2008, the number of homes in Cambodia that did not have sufficient income for food or other essentials increased from 62 to 69 percent, according to the report. However, Cambodia’s “massive increase in agricultural production” during the past decade, including a 359 percent increase in maize, 89 percent increase in vegetables and 82 percent increase in paddy rice, has made the country more food secure which refers to the household’s physical and economic access to food.
According to the U.N. report, Cambodia has “one of the most coherent sets of policies for food security and agriculture.” …
Global food prices remained high in August according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) food price index, maintaining the high level achieved last month as corn prices jumped in the US and rice prices increased in Cambodia.
With 213 points in August the food index was unchanged from July, but it was lower than the February 2011 peak of 238 points and still 18 points below August of last year. …
The food index includes the FAO price indexes of cereal, oils/fats, meat, dairy and sugar. …
Although the index was unchanged, rice and wheat prices slightly increased, offsetting a slight decrease of corn, according to the FAO. …
Villagers in Kratie province have long feared the proposed Sambor hydroelectric dam and the impact it could have on their subsistence fishing and riverbank agriculture.
According to Resilience on the Mekong: A Vulnerability and Adaptation Assessment in North-East Cambodia, a report released by the World Wildlife Foundation on Friday, those concerns are more than warranted.
The report focuses on a 56 linear-kilometre stretch of the Mekong, between Stung Treng and Kratie provinces, known as the Mekong Flooded Forest. …
Water quality and fish migration would be some of the casualties of such a hydroelectric project. …
Natural rubber (NR) production in Association of Natural Rubber Producing Countries (ANRPC) this year is set to rise by 4.9% to 10.83 million tonnes from 10.33 million tonnes in 2011…
The members of ANRPC are Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, India, China, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore and Sri Lanka…
A new report – 10 Years of the Better Factories Cambodia Project: A critical evaluation – has been released by Clean Clothes Campaign and Community Legal Education Center. Started in 2001, the goal of the Better Factories program is to improve the working conditions in Cambodian factories and end sweat-shop production.The report discusses the BFC’s achievements and limitations from a worker rights’ perspective.
2011 marked the 10th anniversary of the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Better Factories Cambodia (BFC) project in Cambodia. The overarching goal of the BFC is to gradually improve the working conditions of factories in Cambodia and ultimately increase production of sweat-shop-free goods…
While the humanitarian objections to Mondulkiri’s proposed Lower Sesan 2 hydropower dam project are well documented, a report from conservation NGO International Rivers yesterday highlighted an objection of another sort: the Lower Sesan wouldn’t be a very good location for a dam in the first place.
According to the report, which compiled information from the Asian Development Bank (ADB), environmental assessments and local media reports, the Lower Sesan is a poor place for such a project from a logistical standpoint, and the dam would rank among the least efficient in terms of megawatts (MW) of power produced versus land lost to flooding. …
The report said that the Lower Sesan is heavily dammed above the proposed site, and even dams upstream are struggling to get enough water to operate at full capacity – due in part to more dams even farther upstream. …
The hydro-power dams planned for three tributary rivers in north-eastern Cambodia will have unforeseeable social and environmental consequences for the regional and its people, according to a report released yesterday.
Authored by International Rivers and 3S Rivers Protection Network, the report focuses on six hydro-power dams planned for the Sesan, Sekong and Srepok rivers in Stung Treng and Ratanakkiri provinces.
The report asserts that there is a lack of information regarding the long-term effects on the six dams, which environmentalists believe will have irreversible consequences for fisheries and the livelihoods of millions living on the three rivers. …
Cambodia continues to suffer from drought with tens of thousands of hecters of rice seedlings in the cities and provinces affected.
A report from the National Committee for Disaster Management said on Wednesdasy as of August 21st drought has damaged 11,350 hectacres of rice seedlings in 14 cities and affected another 139,350 hectacres in other provinces…
Cambodia has gained the investments of 178 million U.S. dollars from its ASEAN member states in the first six months of 2012, according to a report from the Council for the Development of Cambodia said this week.
From January to June this year, the country granted licenses to four projects from Thailand with the total investment of 84 million U.S. dollars, four projects from Vietnam with 82.5 million U.S. dollars, and one project worth 11.5 million U.S. dollars from Singapore, the report said.
Cambodia licensed to 72 domestic and foreign investment project worth about 692 million in first half of 2012. Local investors focused on beverage manufacturing, rice mills, to tourism resort development. And foreign investors from Us, UK, Hong Kong, South Korea also focused on garment and textile factories, to rice mills.
Women’s economic roles in Cambodia have made slower progress than in many other countries in the Asia-Pacific region, World Bank economists said yesterday.
The region as a whole has seen tremendous gains in the way of gender equality during the past 20 years, but increasing wages and education for women should be a policy priority for Cambodia, according to the economists and a World Bank report issued yesterday.
The report identified gender equality as a contributor to higher productivity and income growth.
It also pointed to foreign direct investment into garment manufacturing as a driver for women’s employment, although the stability of that work was susceptible to external shock should demand for Cambodia’s largest gross domestic product generator decline.
Cambodian women earn US$0.75 to every dollar their male counterparts make, World Bank economist and lead author of the report Andrew Mason said yesterday during a web conference from Bangkok.
For every 100 men in secondary education in the Kingdom, 85 women attended class.
“She needs support – from agencies, ministries, organisations, from anywhere,” Cambodia Women Entrepreneurs Association president Seng Takakneary said yesterday of her countrywomen. …
