- Long known as a hotspot for rapid and largely illegal deforestation for logging, Cambodia was singled out in a May 2017 EIA report.
- The report was the result of months of undercover investigations which found that from November 2016, more than 300,000 cubic meters (nearly 10.6 million cubic feet) of timber have been illegally felled in a wildlife sanctuary and two protected areas in Cambodia.
- Most of the timber was sold to Vietnam and generated $13 million in kickbacks from Vietnamese timber traders.
- Environmental experts believe that a much-publicized crackdown on illegal logging launched in Cambodia in early 2016 was little more than theatrics.
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia – It was June 1999, and Cambodia’s then-Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Chhea Song, was addressing a regional symposium on forestry law enforcement in Phnom Penh.
“The…action of the [Royal Government of Cambodia]…has resulted in almost 95 percent reduction in illegal felling [of trees] and the efforts are being continued. The small-scale illegal operators, particularly the ox-buffalo cart owners account for the remaining 5 percent,” he said in his speech.
Describing the speech in his book, “Governing Cambodia’s Forests,” author Andrew Cock says Song was able to make such a claim because the government at that time was, “Adopting the perspective that any type of extractive activity that was in some way authorized by the leadership was by definition legal.” In other words, logging being carried out by concessionaires was being ignored.
In the nearly two decades since that speech, things have arguably gone from bad to worse.
Cambodia’s logging problems are so serious that in 2014, Global Forest Watch said the rate of deforestation in the country between 2011 and 2014 had accelerated at a faster pace than anywhere else in the world, and that four times the amount of tree cover had been lost during that period. The scale of deforestation that has been seen across the country can be seen in satellite images of one area on December 31, 2000 and then again October 30, 2015.
So it came as little surprise when, in May 2017, the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency released the results of a probe into illegal logging and smuggling that laid bare the extent of the collusion on both sides of the Cambodian-Vietnamese border. Since November 2016, more than 300,000 cubic meters (nearly 10.6 million cubic feet) of timber have been illegally felled in a wildlife sanctuary and two protected areas in Cambodia, some of which receive EU funding. Officials have reportedly made at least $13 million in kickbacks from Vietnamese timber traders.
Once over the border — despite a ban on timber exports — Vietnamese officials would also receive hefty bribes to alter their quotas and give the illegal wood a legal status, then slap a tax on it. Just days after the investigation was published, Vietnam and the EU completed their negotiations and formally agreed on the text of a would-be Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA).
Read more: Long Plagued by Illegal Logging, Cambodia Faces Accusations of Corruption
