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Illegal logging in Cambodia
Law of the jungle
Aug 7th 2003 | CHUP PLANTATION, TUMRING
From The Economist print edition
Just chopping it down
ENVIRONMENTALISTS, scouring Cambodia's jungles for evidence of illegal logging, ask a passing farmer where trees are being cut down. "Take any path," he replies. He is right: despite restrictions on felling trees and a ban on transporting timber, proof of illegal logging is easy to find. Lorries loaded with wood ply the roads in forested areas. Workers at a sawmill readily admit that they receive fresh supplies of timber every week. And all this is happening three years into a World Bank project to transform Cambodia's rapacious logging concessionaires into prudent "forest managers".
Logging has long been cause for controversy in Cambodia. In the 1990s, during the first vaguely stable period the country had enjoyed in decades, the cash-strapped government dished out logging concessions. Many villagers who had made a living tapping trees for their aromatic and flammable resins found themselves destitute. Donor nations and organisations insisted that the free-for-all be brought under control. Since then, the government has cancelled some concessions, and, through new laws and decrees, imposed restrictions on the rest. When these measures failed to stop the destruction of Cambodia's forests, the government suspended all the logging concessions and imposed a moratorium on the transport of timber.
Since 1999, the donors had also insisted that the government hire an independent monitor to make sure these regulations were being observed. Global Witness, the organisation selected for the job, duly reported that they were not, to the government's fury. The investigators of the government's forestry department, Global Witness complained, were ignoring all the abuses it reported. The organisation hinted at corruption. The government told Global Witness to leave. Since then, there has been no official watchdog to keep an eye on Cambodia's forests.
The World Bank is withholding a $15m loan for Cambodia until the mess is sorted out. But the government insists there is no mess and that forest cover is on the increase, a claim that environmentalists and donors reject. Now the government is devising schemes to get around the forestry regulations. One is to reclassify forest areas as plantation land. That lets developers cut down their trees without interference.
This is what is happening at Tumring, in Kampong Thom province in northern Cambodia. A rubber plantation has opened a vast wasteland in the middle of Cambodia's biggest remaining lowland forest. The buzz of chainsaws drowns out birdsong. Villagers complain that the plantation firm, which is state-owned, took their land and cut down their resin trees without paying compensation.
Bill Magrath, the World Bank's forestry representative in Cambodia, says discussions are underway to compensate the displaced villagers, close the regulatory loophole that paved the way for the plantation, and hire new monitors to guard against further abuses. But if the pace of past reforms is anything to go by, many more trees will disappear before those discussions bear fruit.
Source: The Economist
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