By Matt Blomberg
PHNOM PENH, May 2 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A Cambodian conservation group has warned that logging in the protected Prey Lang forest has ramped up during the coronavirus pandemic, vowing it would continue to monitor the destruction despite government threats of legal action to stop that work.
Members of the Prey Lang Community Network (PLCN) told the Thomson Reuters Foundation officials were allowing timber to be laundered through agri-business projects bordering the forest, one of Southeast Asia’s last lowland evergreen woodlands.
Neth Pheaktra, an environment ministry spokesman, said only “very small-scale illegal logging by local people” had taken place in Prey Lang, and authorities were working to stop it.
He added that PLCN activists were flouting the law by tracking deforestation without government permission.
Cambodia has been beset by disputes over land ownership and forest destruction since the Maoist Khmer Rouge regime destroyed all property records in the 1970s.
In the early 2000s, the government ushered in a development plan that saw more than 10% of the nation’s territory turned over to agri-business ventures – mostly foreign-owned rubber plantations – on long-term leases, some inside protected areas.
But Prime Minister Hun Sen suspended the programme in 2012, amid widespread reports of forced evictions and environmental devastation.
DEFORESTATION SPIKE
Cambodia lost a quarter of its total tree cover between 2001 and 2018, among the highest deforestation rates in the world, according to data collated by international monitoring service Global Forest Watch (GFW).
London-based watchdog Global Witness has produced reports showing how politically connected Cambodian tycoons use concessions and military personnel to strip valuable wood from protected forests to feed thriving markets in China and Vietnam.
Almost half a million cubic metres of wood was smuggled across Cambodia’s eastern border to Vietnam from 2016-2018, according to the Environmental Investigation Agency, another London-based advocacy group.
“It’s a similar model in Prey Lang,” said Ouch Leng, winner of the 2016 Goldman Prize for his work exposing corruption and illegal logging, who often works alongside PLCN patrollers.
“Now, with coronavirus, the destruction has increased massively,” he added, citing the recent discovery of new trails leading from a government-leased concession into the forest.
Cambodia has reported only about 120 cases of COVID-19 and zero deaths, according to a Reuters tally, but its economy has taken a hit from the global drop in tourism and clothing sales.
