The Scramble for Cambodia - Hun Sen's Cambodia - page 173

ing intently ahead as he piloted the battered Toyota Camry through the mud, “from the
low level up to the high level.”
In early 2012 the Cambodian government drafted a subdecree that would extend pro-
tected status to Prey Lang. 6 Passage of the law would be a step forward, but it's unclear
what difference it would make. Legal protections have done little to prevent the Boeung
Per Wildlife Sanctuary, a 242,500-hectare protected area just to the west of Prey Lang,
from being obliterated by illegal loggers. According to the human rights group ADHOC,
nearly half of the area has been granted to rubber companies, the biggest of which are
owned by the casino and logging magnate Try Pheap and An Marady, another oknha ty-
coon. 7 As in Prey Lang, Savuth says these two firms fell trees in surrounding areas and
then launder them through their concession lands. He even suspects that Try Pheap Im-
port Export Co. Ltd. has driven into Prey Lang, removed trees, and transported them back
to Boeung Per for processing. One Environment Ministry official said the concessions
were granted in “degraded forest” areas. 8 But Savuth said the firms single out valuable
“luxury” trees like Siamese rosewood, a richly hued hardwood that can fetch tens of thou-
sands of dollars per log for buyers in Vietnam and China. “With the value of these logs
there would be no need for the Cambodian government to borrow money from foreign
countries,” he said, urging the car onward. “When I see the loss caused by deforestation,
I feel almost crazy.”
If there was one upside to Cambodia's decades of upheavals, it was that the country's
abundant forests remained mostly intact. During the Sihanouk era forest cover actually
increased, and extended over more than three-quarters of the country by the time the Kh-
mer Rouge came to power in 1975. 9 Subsequent spells of war and isolation meant that
the country largely avoided the severe deforestation experienced by Indonesia, Malaysia,
and Thailand during their respective economic booms. All this changed at the end of the
1980s, however, with the onset of Hunsenomics.
The Cambodian government, facing economic collapse in 1990, kick-started logging
operations in order to earn hard currency to fund its ongoing war against the Khmer
Rouge; by 1992, forestry revenue made up four-fifths of the government's foreign ex-
change earnings. 10 The same was true for Pol Pot's men, based in heavily forested strong-
holds along the Thai border. Selling off logging rights to Thai firms helped to fill the
breach left by a falloff in Chinese aid—a process that accelerated further after Thailand
declared a domestic logging ban in January 1989, pushing timber dealers over the border
into Cambodia. Before the ink was dry on the Paris Peace Agreements, the two sides were
competing to strip Cambodia's forests bare.
The pattern continued after the coalition government took office in 1993. Hun Sen and
Prince Ranariddh quickly agreed on a joint forestry “policy,” signing Cambodian forests