Environment - Cambodia - page 680

Environmental Issues
Logging
The greatest threat to Cambodia's globally important ecosystems is logging for charcoal
and timber and to clear land for cash-crop plantations. During the Vietnamese occupation,
troops stripped away swaths of forest to prevent Khmer Rouge ambushes along highways.
The devastation increased in the 1990s, when the shift to a capitalist market economy led to
an asset-stripping bonanza by well-connected businessmen.
International demand for timber is huge and, as neighbouring countries such as Thailand
and Vietnam began to enforce much tougher logging regulations, foreign logging compan-
ies flocked to Cambodia. At the height of the country's logging epidemic in the late 1990s,
just under 70,000 sq km of the country's land area, or about 35% of its total surface area,
had been allocated as concessions, amounting to almost all of Cambodia's forest land ex-
cept national parks and protected areas. However, even in these supposed havens, illegal
logging continued. According to environmental watchdog Global Witness
( www.globalwitness.org ) , the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF) is the driving force be-
hind much of the recent logging in remote border regions.
In 2005 three rangers working with the NGO Flora & Fauna International to prevent illegal hunt-
ing and logging in the Cardamom Mountains were murdered in two separate incidents, appar-
ently by poachers. In 2012, popular environmental activist Chhut Vuthy, founder of the Natural
Resource Protection Group, was shot dead in Koh Kong province.
In the short term, deforestation is contributing to worsening floods along the Mekong,
but the long-term implications of logging are hard to assess. Without trees to cloak the
hills, rains will inevitably carry away large amounts of topsoil during future monsoons and
in time this will have a serious effect on Tonlé Sap.
Since 2002 things have been looking up. Under pressure from donors and international
institutions, all logging contracts were effectively frozen, pending further negotiations with
the government. However, small-scale illegal logging has continued, including cutting for
charcoal production and slash-and-burn for settlement.
The latest threat to Cambodia's forests comes from 'economic concessions' granted to
establish plantations of cash crops such as rubber, mango, cashew and jackfruit, or agro-