News

‘Thousands of trees’ burned and logged in Cambodia: Q&A with filmmaker Sean Gallagher

In January 2020, filmmaker Sean Gallagher traveled to Cambodia with a camera, drone, and a mission: to create a film revealing the impacts of deforestation. Riding on the backs of motorbikes driven by local activists, Gallagher spent several weeks venturing deep into protected forests in ...

Elizabeth Claire Alberts

Environmental activist group suspends work in Cambodia

A Cambodian environmental protection group is suspending operations in Cambodia amid concerns for the safety of its activists, many of whom have been detained and jailed on charges widely thought to be politically motivated, the group’s founder said in an interview this week. Alejandro Gonzalez-Davidson, a ...

Reported by RFA’s Khmer Service. Translated by Sok Ry Sum. Written in English by Richard Finney.

Gov’t says satellite images don’t prove sand dredging crisis

The government responded to criticism that sand pumping in the Mekong river is more than the amount being reported and that it has increased over recent years. The reaction is to respond to an article published in Eos, a science news magazine, titled “Satellites Spy on ...

Son Minea

New megadams threaten world’s biggest fish

There was a time when scores of some of the world’s largest freshwater fishes swam up the Mekong River, past the Laotian town of Luang Prabang, now a UNESCO World Heritage site. Giant catfish the size of grizzly bears, seven-striped barb, giant pangasius, and other huge fish once made ...

STEFAN LOVGREN

Mining companies hunt for buried treasure on indigenous Cambodian land

Deep in the forests of northeast Cambodia, bamboo shoots criss-crossed rays of sunlight as 26-year-old Tang Kalann passed by open and covered pits near the Tang Se community, comprising four indigenous Jarai villages where he lives.  For years, the mining firm Angkor Resources Corp., formerly Angkor ...

JACK BROOK

Inside the Campaign to Save an Imperiled Cambodian Rainforest

We were seated near a lush river in the Southern Cardamom Mountains, huddled over a lunch of chicken and rice, when the tip came in via text message: Someone had passed along the location of a poaching camp. Within minutes, the entire group — including Darian ...

Francesco Lastrucci

Major clothing brands contribute to deforestation in Cambodia, report finds

A drone camera soars over a timber yard where thousands of tons of logs are strewn across the ground. In one clip, a bulldozer scoops up a heap of wood while black smoke billows out of its exhaust pipe. In another, workers load wood onto ...

Elizabeth Claire Alberts

Cambodia’s law leaves domestic workers unseen and unprotected

It has been ten years since Cambodia first imposed a ban on sending Khmer domestic workers to Malaysia following dozens of reports of abuse by Malaysian employers, including overwork, sexual harassment and verbal and physical assault.  Since then, the Cambodian government has taken several steps to ...

DOLPHIE BOU AND ANJU MARY PAUL

Trouble on the Mekong

Two reports released last month by The Mekong River Commission (MRC), an inter-governmental organisation that works with the governments of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam to jointly manage the river’s resources, serve as a crucial health check on the state of Southeast Asia’s longest river ...

MARK TILLY

New dams on 3S rivers endanger survival of the Mekong

“It’s rare to see the birds these days, they’re gone. They lived off the fish, but most of the fish are gone too,” says Vuth Khat as he tours what used to be his village in the northeastern Cambodian province of Stung Treng and talks ...

Gerald Flynn, Phoung Vantha

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