Deforestation drivers

A company owned by a tycoon accused of logging vast stretches of forest in Cambodia’s Virachey National Park on 28 January fired back at its detractors, claiming that it paid the state more than $1 million in taxes and was cleared by a recent anti-illegal logging ...

A sophisticated new environmental analysis software package has painted a grim picture of Mondulkiri province’s future environmental health. Presented and debated in Phnom Penh on 25 January, the WWF-led project, dubbed InVEST, short for Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-offs, predicts that by 2030, Mondulkiri, ...

Cambodia’s military police said on 18 January that they have sealed the Vietnam border against wood transport following a major crackdown on two tycoons’ logging warehouses on 17 January. Local observers and experts, however, suggested the actions were little more than a hiccup for a long-tolerated ...

A group of villagers in Mondolkiri province filed a lawsuit this week against three local border police officers and a forestry official accusing them of allowing Vietnamese loggers to sneak across the nearby border and illegally log the forests they depend on for a living. Khut ...

New research conducted in Malaysia has drawn a link between deforestation and a rise in a specific strain of malaria often carried by macaques, a link the study’s lead author says could hold true for Cambodia as well. The results of the study, published in Emerging ...

A thousand tonnes of timber bound for the Chinese border have been seized by police, with the help of local residents amid armed clashes between the Tatmadaw and the Kachin Independence Army. Investigators are now following up the seizure of the 2206 logs in Bhamaw/Bhamo township, ...

Cambodia continues to lack an effective way to resolve land disputes, which remain a major destroyer of livelihoods for many families, according to a study released by the NGO Forum on 18 November. The study examines 26 sample villages in Battambang, Kampong Speu, Pursat and Kampong ...

While crowds gathered in Phnom Penh to watch Cambodia’s Independence Day parade, a different sort of procession drew the attention of villagers in Ratanakkiri province on 9 November, with hundreds of motorbikes flooding across border checkpoints loaded with luxury timber. The spectacle, which on a smaller ...

A consultation workshop on the Forestry Legality Compendium held in Vientiane on 6 November revealed that Laos is one of many countries still on the list of those where unregulated logging takes place. Laos is listed because internationally it is considered that some aspects of forest management ...

Lao forestry officials dismissed a recent WWF report which exaggerated the scenario of illegal logging in Laos, a senior official in charge at the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry has confirmed. Deputy Director General of the Department of Forest Inspection under the Ministry of Agriculture and ...