News
Plundering Cambodia's Forests
Under a rickety wooden stilt house near Cambodia’s Phnom Prich Wildlife Sanctuary, one of the country’s leading environmental campaigners is preparing dinner. Ouch Leng stuffs raw meat into an empty beer can and throws it into the fire. It’s a poor man’s feast for his team ...
At a Cambodian Lake, a Climate Crisis Unfolds
When I first met Ly Heng in May 2016, the forest behind his house was still smoldering — the remnants of the worst drought to hit Southeast Asia in decades. Heng lived along a small river at the top of Cambodia’s Tonle Sap Lake, in a protected ...
Abby Seiff
Cambodia's lifeline threatened as Mekong recedes to historic low
As world leaders meet in New York from Monday to discuss the global challenge of climate change, thousands of kilometres away people in Cambodia are grappling with dramatic changes to the country’s ecosystem, including the lowest water levels in the crucially-important Mekong River ever recorded. The United Nations Development Programme, ...
Andrew Nachemson
Reacting to reform: Cambodia’s environment: Triumph or tyranny?
Cambodia’s new environmental policies are promising, but they also signal a government agenda to consolidate power over the country’s forests, Sarah Milne writes. In 2016, Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen announced a dramatic suite of jurisdictional and policy reforms that will affect how land and forests are governed ...
Sarah Milne
Confronting the new climate reality in Asia and the Pacific
ON Monday, world leaders will gather at the UN in New York for the Climate Action Summit. Their goal is simple – to increase ambition and accelerate action in the face of a mounting climate emergency. For many this means ambition and action that enables countries to ...
Man charged over land grab of hundreds of hectares of protected forest
Battambang provincial court has charged a man who illegally cleared hundreds of hectares of protected forest land for sale as housing lots in Battambang province’s Samlot district since 2015. Long Vuthy, 48, was arrested on September 15 by joint forces from the provincial authority and National ...
Khy Sovuthy
Koh Kong’s first coal-fired plant up in the air: Ministry
The investors of a project to build the first coal-fired power plant in Koh Kong province are still looking for buyers, according to the Ministry of Mines and Energy. In 2017, Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, a government-owned utility, started negotiations on building a 2,400-megawatt coal-fired ...
Chea Vansak
Tonlé Sap Ecosystem is threatened by Development of Hydropower Dams on the Mekong River
Every year, between May and October, floodwaters from the Lower Mekong Basin reverse the flow of the Tonlé River in Cambodia. That pushes sediment-rich waters into the Tonlé Sap Lake and its surrounding floodplains and forests, which support complex food webs, migration patterns and agricultural ...
Kitila Davies
Kampot mangroves ‘cleared in land grab’
The Changhaon village community claims that many hectares of mangrove forest in the coastal area in a village in Teuk Chhou district’s Prek Tnort commune, in Kampot province, were being cut down to grab land for private ownership. However, they claim that the authorities have not ...
Voun Dara
Minister relays land encroachment prevention orders
Agriculture Minister Veng Sakhon has urged local authorities to follow the instructions of the Council of Ministers on how to prevent illegal land encroachment. On Thursday, the Council of Ministers issued a letter to Mr Sakhon, who is chairman of the National Committee to Prevent Illegal ...
Pech Sotheary