Opposition lawmaker Son Chhay said yesterday that he would ask the government to cancel the land concession of a Vietnamese rubber firm in Ratanakkiri province he accused of logging and exporting wood illegally.
Mr. Chay, a candidate in July’s national election for the Cambodia National Rescue Party, wrapped up a three-day... continue
Nearly three tonnes of illegally logged rosewood was seized during a raid on the home of a former military police officer in Stung Treng province yesterday.
Provincial deputy prosecutor Sun Yeut, who took part in a multi-departmental raid that included police and Forestry Administration officials, said the seized luxury wood had been sent to the local forestry office but that no arrests had been made. …
Thailand and Cambodia have signed four new agreements focused on bolstering trust and maintaining security.
Defence Minister Sukumpol Suwanatat made the announcement after the 9th GBC meeting at Wangjuntr Golf Park in Rayong’s Wang Chan district.
He said one of the four agreements concerned the spread of information.
Both parties committed to promoting positive and factual information about each other to help bolster trust and respect, the minister said.
The second agreement concerns the suppression of illegal activities in border areas, especially drug smuggling and logging. …
The third agreement involves supporting residents living in border areas by promoting job creation, tourism, education and health care. …
Both parties also agreed to endorse the results of the Joint Working Group (JWG) meetings, which aim to solve border disputes, as well as the joint agreement on landmine clearance drawn up by the Thailand and Cambodian Mine Action Centres.
Ratanakkiri provincial police on Monday arrested the chief of staff of a Vietnamese rubber concessionaire and his Cambodian translator who are believed to have burned down more than $5,000 worth of property related to a land dispute in O’Chum district, police said.
Meas Pov Bora, chief of the provincial minor crimes office, said that Vietnamese national Ngvieng Hong Fou, 30, chief of staff for a company called CRD, and his translator Sim Borin, 31, were arrested for allegedly setting fire to one house and four huts, and destroying some 200 bunches of cassava plants – alone worth $5,650 – belonging to local landowner Ly Sok Ngim. …
Koh Kong province’s mangrove forests have changed from being a source of charcoal to serving tourists who help to protect their biodiversity. The forests have now become a popular destination for Cambodian tourists. …
Yem Yan, Peam Krasorb commune chief in Koh Kong, said gradually visitors have been coming from different provinces in the country.
He said Peam Krasorb community earned about 140 million riel ($35,000) from selling tickets to 40,000 visitors – Cambodian visitors pay 3,000 riel and foreigners pay 5,000 riel per day – per year in the last few years. …
Yem Yan said mangrove forests were being destroyed in the 1990s because villagers made charcoal, but since the year 2000 there has been strict protection of mangrove forests. …
Royal Thai Navy ships intercepted a Cambodian fishing boat illegally smuggling 10 million baht in Siamese rosewood out of the kingdom. …
The HTMS Chao Phraya staffed with military, customs and forestry office personnel captured the 18-meter-long fishing vessel carrying 296 logs in its fish holds April 28 in Rayong Bay. …
Navy officials said the smuggled logs were to be offloaded in Vietnamese waters. …
Two massive hydropower dams planned for the Mekong’s tributaries in Ratanakkiri province have been deemed economically viable by two feasibility studies conducted by a pair of giant Chinese conglomerates, a provincial industry, mines and energy official said yesterday. …
Despite the feasibility studies having been completed, local authorities yesterday said they have not received any clear information regarding the dams. Veun Sai district governor Chum Ngil said he had not been consulted about the dam’s feasibility despite a huge area being carved out of his district for a reservoir. …
Meach Mean, coordinator for the 3S Rivers Protection Network, an NGO advocating for villagers affected by the region’s planned dams, said the social and environmental impacts for the Srepok 3 and Sesan 3 dams would be huge. For example, about 40 villages will be affected by the Sean 3, he said. …
The Ministry of Agriculture has signed a deal with Try Pheap Import Export to give the firm the right to purchase all timber felled in economic land concessions (ELCs) in Ratanakkiri province, according to a letter sent from the Agriculture Ministry to the Forestry Administration in February.
Signed by Lor Raksmey, secretary-general at the Ministry of Agriculture, and sent to Forestry Administration chief Chheng Kim Sun, the letter says that the firm owned by well-connected casino, mining and agriculture mogul Try Pheap has been granted purchasing rights over timber in Ratanakkiri in order “to meet local demand and for export” and “generate royalties and dividends for the state’s budget.”
“The forestry administration will allow Try Pheap Import Export to buy wood from every economic land concession located in Ratanakkiri province,” the letter, dated February 26, reads.
Though a senior official in the province said the agreement will help improve the regulation of Ratanakkirri’s timber trade by directing felled trees through only one company, a provincial land rights monitor said the deal would create a market that encourages illegal logging and accelerate the rate at which the forest is being deforested.
Although concessionaires are required under law to log only within their ELCs and pay royalties on any timber they extract, community activists and environmental monitors have complained that many companies regularly cut down trees and systematically smuggle logs across the border to be sold in Vietnam. …
Cambodia’s government has granted ELCs in Ratanakkirri to 27 companies covering a total of 222,933 hectares, according to figures compiled from Adhoc. …
In February 2011, Prime Minister Hun Sen granted Try Pheap two 70-year leases covering 18,885 hectares within the park in Cambodia’s northeast. …
Nearly a tonne of rosewood was uncovered in a raid yesterday in Kampong Speu in which the suspect successfully fled after injuring an officer, police officials said. …
“According to the quality assessment, I can say a rough value of that rosewood is $300,000,” he [Keo Pisey, provincial police chief] said. “Now, we will continue to investigate and search to arrest him and his accomplices, because I think that case involves not only him.”
Jarai villagers in Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadav district escalated the defense of their protected land this weekend, confiscating the keys and batteries of bulldozers owned by the Vietnamese company they claim has been illegally clearing the area, community leaders said yesterday.
The move comes after a number of protests in recent weeks at two villages in the district against a firm known as Company 72 that is working in an economic land concession area granted to conglomerate Men Sarun Co., Ltd. …
A Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RACF) official in Oddar Meanchey province said he would be happy to meet with community forestry members who say that new military bases are threatening their plans to sell millions of dollars worth of carbon credits to foreign companies in return for protecting the environment. …
Yesterday, Major General San Sear, deputy commander of intervention infantry for RCAF’s Division II, which oversees the area … denied the widespread forest clearance that members of the forestry network have accused the military of. …
“Our soldiers do not cut down the trees inside the protected forests because we also need the trees to give us shade,” he said. “There are no RCAF soldiers who have engaged in logging and deforestation.”
Maj. Gen. Sear said orders from the highest levels of government had been given to set up bases in the protected forest zone, which runs along Cambodia’s contentious border with Thailand.
Mr. [Sar] Thlai [head of the community forest network area], said locals found out about yet another military base in another forest when a group of soldiers forced a community patrol team to give up a cache of wood and chainsaws it had recently seized from illegal loggers.
At a meeting with local military officials about a year ago, the military said it was taking over 2,500 hectares in two of those forests, Mr. Thlai said. …
Three companies accused of illegal logging in Ratanakkiri province are in possession of a combined 30,000 hectares of economic land concessions (ELCs) that are likely illegal because they are owned by the same parent firm.
Hoang Anh Andong Meas, Hoang Anh Lumphat and Hoang Anh Ouyadav are all subsidiaries of HAGL, according to the company’s 2012 annual report.
Hoang Anh Andong Meas and Hoang Anh Lumphat’s concessions lie inside the Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary, which rights groups have said is being decimated by illegal loggers who then bring the wood onto company land.
Very similarly named companies – including one called Hoang An Andong Meas, which has a 9,775-hectare concession inside Virachey National Park – operate elsewhere in the province.
Article 59 of the Land Law stipulates individuals or legal entities controlled by the same person cannot hold more than 10,000 hectares of ELCs, even if it is spread over multiple concessions. …
BANGKOK: Demand for farmland may strip the Greater Mekong region of a third of its remaining forest cover over the next two decades without swift government action, a leading conservation group warned Thursday.
Forests are being cleared for commodities such as rubber and rice while illegal logging is decimating many protected zones, WWF said in a report, adding a contentious dam on Mekong river will deepen already severe ecosystem damage.
“The Greater Mekong is at a crossroads,” said Peter Cutter of the WFF, adding Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar lost between 22-24 percent of their forests from 1973 — the first point of available data — to 2009, while 43 percent of woodland was stripped from Thailand and Vietnam. …
The US$3.8 billion hydroelectric project, which is due to be completed in around five years, has sharply divided the four Mekong nations — Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. …
The military’s ongoing clearing of community forests in Oddar Meanchey province risks derailing Cambodia’s first forest-based carbon trading scheme backed by the U.N., according to the latest assessment of the project.
Community forest groups, who stand to earn millions from the project, said on Wednesday that they have proposed a meeting with officials at the provincial government’s headquarters in Samraong City for Wednesday in order to discuss illegal logging in the area.
Members of the network of 13 community forests that make up the 68,000-hectare project area have been complaining about the illegal for years and more recently about a proliferation of military bases in the forests. …
With the potential risks down the line, and more projects from REDD- a U.N. sponsored initiative for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation- in the works around Cambodia, the outcome of the project in Oddar Meanchey could prove critical. …
As part of the REDD initiative, the project aims to convince western companies looking to offset their carbon emission to pay for the carbon the community forests will keep locked in the trees. The scheme only works, of course if the trees remain standing.
Sa Thlai, who heads the provinces community forest network, has been warning that military bases have been “destroying” the project for months, and that more than half of one of the 13 forests had already been felled. …
Cambodia has lost almost a quarter of its forests in the past 40 years due to rapid development and China’s demand for timber, according to a new report released yesterday by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) on the Greater Mekong Region.
Looking at five countries in the Mekong Region- Cambodia, Laos, Burma, Thailand and Vietnam- WWF has calculated, using data from both satellite analysis and U.N. country reports, that almost a third of the region’s forests have been destroyed. Titled Ecosystems in the Greater Mekong Region, the report says that the presence of primary forest is “extremely low” in Cambodia, and only approximately 10 million hectares of forest cover remain in the county.
According to Agence Kampuchea Presse, Prime Minister Hun Sen said this week that 1.5 million hectares of forest cover has been used for economic land concessions, while there remains 9.5 million hectares of forest cover left in the country. However since 1.2 million hectares of these concessions have been allocated for rubber plantations, Mr. Hun Sen said that these land grants, in fact constitute forest cover …
When activists Mom Sakin and Sorn Siyan took a stand against illegal logging in Kratie province last month, they were allegedly threatened with violence and lawsuits from officials.
“Powerful people who wanted to intimidate us shot their guns into the air to prevent us from going into the forest,” Sakin, a member of the provincial branch of the Community Peace Network, said yesterday. …
Stories like these are becoming more frequent among human rights defenders and activists, particularly those seeking to counter illegal logging, rights group Adhoc said yesterday.
“So far in 2013, 48 [human rights defenders] and activists have been threatened for their work relating to the protection of environmental and natural resources,” Adhoc said in a statement. “Those working to protect poorer Cambodians against rights abuses have repeatedly found themselves threatened and intimidated by the authorities, often at the bequest of rich and well-connected business figures.” …
Jarai minority villagers in Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadav district protested in two locations yesterday against a Vietnamese company that community leaders say has been clearing their protected land and forcing villagers to accept inadequate compensation.
Community leader Sev Hem said 30 angry villagers directly confronted five Company 72 workers and their bulldozers in Yatung commune’s Ten village yesterday. …
Villagers and local rights group Adhoc claim Company 72 had forced 10 families in Ten village to give their thumbprints to an agreement accepting $200 per hectare in compensation. …
The government on Friday released a draft of a new public policy guide on the county’s contentious land sector, a move that was welcomed by NGOs, who also called for the government to hold further consultations on the draft. …
Local rights groups have singled out the abuse of the country’s land laws as one of Cambodia’s most pressing human rights problems, in particular the granting of economic land concessions (ELCs) to industrial scale agri-business firms. They accuse such concessions of grabbing land from hundreds of thousands of farmers over the years and causing much of the county’s deforestation.
They also blame ELCs for an uptick in land disputes between local farmers and the concessions’ often well-connected owners.
The paper does not set out any new land laws but offers guidance on how government agencies should apply the ones they have as “to facilitate the use and management of land and natural resources for socio-economic development in an equitable and sustainable manner,” according to a copy of the draft. …
Local authorities and Ratanakkiri provincial forestry officials yesterday visited an area in O’Yadav district where community leaders say a Vietnamese company known as “Company 72” has razed an estimated 1,000 hectares of protected forest since 2011. …
“The villagers complained to the authorities many times, but nothing happens and Company 72 never stops,” said Chhay Thy, provincial co-ordinator for rights group Adhoc. Companies are not allowed to fell protected forest even if the forest overlaps with land granted to the company, he added. …
Company 72, for which no contact information was available, was allegedly caught clearing more than 40 hectares of protected forest in another part of O’Yadav district last week and was summonsed by the Ratanakkiri provincial court to face accusations of illegal logging in February. …
More than 40 hectares of protected forest in Rattanakiri’s O’Yadav district was razed by a Vietnamese company over the course of six days before they were stopped yesterday by villagers and investigators from rights group Adhoc, a local official said.
Sav Hlin, a village chief in the district, said he had received news from villagers that the company – known to them as Company 72 – had been working in the area.
“After I found out they were clearing the forest, we went straight there to stop the vehicles immediately,” said Hlin, who added that more than 40 hectares of the forest land had been cleared by the time he got there with a group of villagers and two Adhoc investigators. …
