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Category: Cambodia
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Cambodia: local people risk everything to defend national park sold off to highest bidders
Botum Sakor national park is one of Cambodia’s biodiversity hotspots, where indigenous tribes have long lived in harmony with the forest and its wildlife, writes Rod Harbinson.
But now they are being violently evicted as the park is being sold off piecemeal to developers for logging, plantations, casinos and hotels. Now local communities are defending themselves and their land.
The sign at the entrance of Botum Sakor, one of Cambodia’s largest National Parks reads:Â “The natural resources belong to the State and they are not for sale to private owners.”
The reality unfolding behind the sign in the park is anything but, with most of it sold off to business. Farmers and fisherfolk have had their houses burned down and now resist regular threats from security guards hired by the park’s new corporate owners.
It is a burning example of a struggle for land that has engulfed the country, reaching crisis proportions.
War widow Mrs Saen Saheng was at home with her grandchildren when 30 security guards entered her village of Prek Smach brandishing axes, sling-shots and electric cattle prods. Resident here since a young woman she explains:
“The company didn’t come and say anything, they just came and broke down my home. They brought security guards and took it apart, two days ago. They were even carrying axes and hammers with them. They brought the axes really close to my face.”
Sixteen families were at the time taking refuge in the village temple having fled their neighbouring village a month previous when security guards torched their homes.
When the villagers rallied the guards backed off, but then called in dumper trucks which blocked the village road with heaps of rock and earth.
In 1998 the Cambodian Government began to sell off parts of Botum Sakor’s 171,250 Ha which has been a National Park established under royal decree since 1993. These Economic Land Concessions (ELCs) awarded to the highest bidder, have placed huge swathes amounting to 70% of the park, in the hands of private developers for agribusiness (such as palm oil and rubber plantations), tourism, infrastructure and quarrying.
A luxury Chinese tourism project, the Dara Sakor Seashore Resort and a Chinese port construction, are at the heart of this controversy. The villagers explained that they hold the district Governor Mr Khem Chandy, responsible for organising the ongoing harassment. They accuse him of being on the payroll of the resort’s developers the Tianjin Union Development Group (UDG).
Soon villagers set up their own road blockade, felling trees and carrying rocks to block access to a new road constructed at the orders of the Governor. One villager explained that the road led to the Governor’s private pier where he took the boat to his island house. By blocking it they were also hitting his income from parking and docking fees.
The Governor arrived in a shiny four wheel drive vehicle and unloaded a large chainsaw with the help of local police, presumably to cut away the trees blocking the road.
When asked for his response to claims of villagers, that he had ordered the security guards to raze their houses, he said: “The minister of Environment, as the chair of that committee, is in charge of solving the problem, not me.” Mr Chandy refused to answer further questions.
Economic Land Concessions have placed huge swathes, amounting to 70% of the park, in the hands of private developers for agribusiness such as palm oil and rubber plantations, tourism and infrastructure.
Mrs Chum Ohn explained why her desperate story has led her to defend the barricades:Â “I had a house but four years ago the company came with axes and destroyed it. They gave me a new house 10 km away but now that is broken too. I received no land and no well for water.”
With life at the relocation site of Ta Noun commune proving impossible she decided to return, only to begin another story of suffering:Â “I received no money, nothing, so now we just returned to the coast for fishing. I built a hut close to the sea but the company they came to destroy my hut too.”
Over a thousand families have been sent inland to till sandy soil on land carved out of the tropical forests of the National Park, which is still home to a plethora of flora and fauna.
In 2009 a four year study of the park’s animal life by Frontier Cambodia confirmed it as a global biodiversity hotspot containing 49 rare mammal species including Asian elephant, leopard, and gibbon. Their inventory also included 69 reptile, 147 butterfly and 196 bird species.
A high stakes game
A four lane 68 km highway built by UDG developers – a Chinese property conglomerate – slices through the middle of the Park to access a 36,000 ha coastal ELC awarded by the government in 2009. Along the highway, swathes of the forest have been bulldozed for building materials.
A big draw-card here is gambling, on a high-stakes level that will dwarf similar developments in the region. The centrepiece of the US$3.8 billion luxury coastal resort will be a casino, accompanied by golf courses and even its own airport. The continued ban on gambling in China lends temptation to potential investors, who may also be lured by the claim on its website, that its concession covers 20% of Cambodia’s entire coastline.
The website says it “will become a new tropical beach paradise for the rich Chinese.” It claims too that the project will house the permanent convention centre of ASEAN. About which the ASEAN Secretariat claims to know nothing, a spokesperson stating: “ASEAN National Tourism Organisations are not involved in this undertaking.”
The website says it will also include a “tropical farm, fishing village and ancient town.” The UDG declined to confirm whether these would be based on the existing establishments involving local people. Or they would be new purpose-built resort attractions. With local farms and fishing villages being currently being razed to the ground the evidence suggests the latter.
A deafening quarry blast shakes the ground beneath our feet as a nearby hillside collapses in clouds of dust at the port site. Rocks are soon being loaded and transported away for construction of shipping wharfs, dams, reservoirs and artificial islands, now transforming the area out of all recognition.
Challenging relocation
Mrs Sok Lim is toiling with a hoe to clear the course grasses that cover her small plot. One of dozens of houses strung along the dusty road comprising Phny Meas village, one of three relocation sites in the area.
The silvery soil underneath is nearly pure sand and, she complains, “nothing much will grow here.” The new houses and land plots lining this dusty roadside have been hurriedly constructed by UDG on land carved out of the thick forest which still towers in the background.
Coming from the coast Mrs Lim is not used to farming like this and misses her once sufficient life of fishing and rice farming. Like her neighbours too she is bitter that the grandiose promises of compensation made by the company have completely failed to materialise. She says of the US$8,000 per hectare she was promised for her farmland, she has received nothing – a common complaint in the area.
Her neighbour Mr Vuthy says he has almost given up farming as he doesn’t find it worthwhile under these conditions: “I planted some fruit trees but they are not growing, there is not enough”, he tells me. “It’s because of the soil – it has no nutrients as it sits on a hill. So when we plant we don’t get much out of it.”
To make ends meet he has taken to foraging what he can in the forest:Â “It is not just me going into the forest, as all the villagers are poor. Those who came to the relocation site have nothing, so we have to enter the forest and look for things such as rattan fruit.”
He is acutely aware of the impact he and his neighbours are having on the forest but feels helpless:Â “We’re all poor. We’ll all go to look for products each year, so there is nothing left the year after. Hence the decline.”
In response to increasing conflicts arising from the handing out of ELCs, in 2012 Prime Minister Hun Sen placed a stop on new ELCs and encouraged enforcement of a ‘leopard skin’ policy.
It decrees that villagers may stay in their homes even where they are in the middle of an ELC, ‘like the spots of a leopard’. Since its implementation critics have cited many examples questioning its workability in practice. Nevertheless it does afford villagers, at least on paper, the right to remain in their homes.
The problem in Botum Sakor is all too common in Cambodia, and all the signs are that vested interests have ignored laws with impunity. Implementation of the 2001 Land Law which limits the size of ELCs to 10,000 Ha also seems to be failing, with most of the companies’ concessions here far exceeding this limit. Hun Sen’s halt on ELCs was short-lived with group ADHOC claiming 33 ELCs handed out since the ban.
In February with the blockade having held firm for over a month, the Governor delivered an eviction order to the remaining forty seven families. The day the community counter-sued a woman, one of the forty seven, said:Â “We are not afraid of dying anymore, we just need to continue the fight.”
Forest on fire
In one concession awarded to The Ly Yong Phat Group, the company of government Senator and business tycoon Ly Yong Phat, mile after mile of the tropical forest is on fire, reportedly to clear land for a Tapioca plantation.
The Senator dubbed locally as ‘The King of Koh Kong’ became infamous for his role at the heart of the blood sugar controversy involving child labour on his plantations. Global Forest Watch satellite data highlights the fire locations and shows that the huge area in the heart of the park has been cleared since 2012 and is spreading rapidly.
Ly Yung Phat wants villagers at the coastal community of Preach Sat out of his ELC but they refuse to budge. In February he even made a personal journey to the village calling a meeting in the village temple saying:Â “I got the land concession from the government and it is national park land.”
Most community members were unconvinced as he continued to try and convince them, “I have developed the area and made a new road, so that local people will sell land to me. If I need local people to cooperate why do I have to be the enemy?”
One couple at the meeting who had farmed there over 40 years complained that while a few people connected to the commune chief had received compensation, most had not.
Settlers burnt out
As the boat navigates the twists and turns further into the interior of the park, the channel narrows and eventually we reach a small boat landing. From here it is a 3km walk to the village of Phum Thmey. Along the way we meet a charcoal burner and notice that much of the forest has been cleared, some to make way for Acacia plantations.
The villagers explain how they came here over ten years ago to farm rice. Some are ethnic Cham Muslims originally from Eastern Cambodia. All were dismayed at the ongoing struggle they have had to hang on to farmland they make claim over since a 18,000 Ha ELC was handed out to Chinese Green Rich / Elite Group in 1998 for palm oil and acacia plantations.
Since then this company, said by Greenpeace to be a subsidiary of Asian Pulp and Paper, has been extending its Acacia plantations onto their land, with support from local authorities.
Mr Choey shows me his wad of legal documents and explains how he has been battling to maintain his farmland since 2006, even spending time in jail. He said the government views the settlers as no more than land squatters who have settled in a national park which is off limits.
The settlers view matters differently, as Mrs Saw Phia, an ethnic Cham, explained:Â “They told us this was the company’s land and that the villagers had stolen their land. To which we replied that it couldn’t be the company’s land as when we got here it had no owner and it was forested.”
Many are aggrieved that after the company paid pitifully low wages to the local community to plant an Acacia tree plantation, they then burnt their houses down.
Mrs Saw Phia said:Â “Originally 14 Cham families came to live here, but now there are only three families left because some houses were set on fire and their land was taken from them by the company. We didn’t dare do anything … they got a lighter to set fire to the homes and some axes, so no one dared do anything about it.”
The recently released Human Rights Watch, World Report 2015, highlights that land disputes in Cambodia are now running out of control stating:
“The number of people affected by state-involved land conflicts since 2000 passed the half-million mark in March 2014.”
Published in The Ecologist
Cambodia: indigenous protests repel dam builders – so far
Since the 1980s Cambodia has lost 84% of its primary forests, and the remote Cardamom mountains are the country’s last great natural treasure, writes Rod Harbinson. Just the place for grandiose dam projects? ‘No way!” say indigenous people and young eco-activists.
“Many forests are destroyed in Cambodia – Areng is the last of our great forest areas”, says Sothea Khmer a women’s activist from Phnom Penh, explaining why she is here at the road blockade protest camp:
“We want to stop the Chinese company here. We don’t want them to bring their machinery here to cut the trees, build a dam or dig mines in the Areng valley. The commitment from youth and monks joining us is that they have to stop the company. So they will dedicate their lives here.”
Her words highlight the dramatic decline of Cambodia’s forests which just ten years ago covered large swathes of the country. With some of the highest logging rates in the world it is estimated that since 1990, Cambodia lost 84% of its primary forests [UN FAO].
Now the struggle to save the untold natural riches of these ancient forests has closed in on this patch in the Cardamom mountains, still home to Asian elephants, clouded leopards and the most important breeding site of only 250 wild Siamese crocodiles found globally. Home in all to 31 endangered species.
The Areng dam is ‘a criminal enterprise’
Here the last stand is being played out by activists and local indigenous Chong people. A protest camp hurriedly set up in March [2014] to stop Chinese dam builders entering the Areng Valley to start construction, has since been successful at repelling the dam-builders on several occasions.
As the tropical rain thunders down on the tarpaulin Meng Kheang Seang explains he has come from Phnom Penh to share his experiences. He supports local resistance by people being thrown off their land to make way for Government development schemes.
His friend Phoung shows photos of villagers in Kratie who have had their houses burned to the ground for refusing to move.
Alejandro Gonjalez Davidson asks to “add a little word to your description” when I ask about the Government’s role in the dam: “it is a criminal enterprise, they have assassinated people and they are able to put people in jail and threaten people.”
He explains how senior government officials often leading regional cartels, have systematically plundered the rich natural resources of the country with impunity.
A reluctant leader emerges
Quitting his job 18 months ago to dedicate himself to the campaign, Anglo-Spanish Alex speaks fluent Khmer having been living in the country for 11 years.
He has become the figurehead of a rapidly growing movement, which is attracting youth groups, activists and monks. It is a role he is wary of and he bemoans his bearded face gracing the new banners.
At the same time he cannot deny that the viral popularity of his Facebook videos, has been useful at spreading the message among Cambodia’s youth.
They have even attracting funds from the many Cambodians overseas that fled the regime and along with at least half the population, deeply want to see the end of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s 29 year rule.
We don’t need any compensation because we are staying here on the lands of our ancestors. Our children will never forgive us if we move.
The opposition party has been boycotting the parliament at what it sees as the unfair rigging of the elections in July 2013. This caused huge protests that were finally crushed by a bloody military crackdown which killed striking garment workers.
Still Alex claims the situation has improved as in the past the authorities would have been much quicker to reach for the gun and these days are prepared to negotiate – up to a point.
Fearful of deportation and wanting to play down his leadership role, Alex decides not to join the activists at the blockade now bracing themselves for the arrival of a platoon of soldiers to be stationed near the protest camp to support Sinohydro, the Chinese state-owned dam building company.
No environmental impact assessment has ever been published
The 1,640 mainly indigenous people living in the valley were due to be moved to a nearby relocation site called Veal Thom.
This has recently been rejected due to an outcry by conservation organisations keen to protect the elephant migration route that it would have severed. As yet no alternative has been put forward leaving villagers uncertain about their future.
Dam construction plans show it would include a pipeline, power station, accommodation for 1,200 workers and access roads. These would all add to the affected forest area, making the overall footprint of the dam site far greater than the proposed 20,000 hectare reservoir.
Forest observers are worried. The announcement to clear the neighbouring Tatai dam reservoir site, led to a feverish stampede of hunting and logging as outsiders flocked for rich pickings and inevitably the exploitation spilled into neighbouring forest areas.
Building of the almost complete Tatai dam has been carried out in secrecy at a high security Chinese compound off limits to most Cambodians and foreigners. Rumours circulating of poor working conditions at the site have proven difficult to verify.
Ame Trandem, Cambodia country director of NGO International Rivers, says details of the project under the new management remain obscure. “The project’s Environmental Impact Assessment has not been released to the public, so has never been up for public scrutiny.”
She adds that Sinohydro is notoriously difficult to contact and requests by the author to interview them were met with silence.
Huge cost, huge impact, for little electrical output
The Areng dam would be the fourth hydropower plant in the Cardamoms to provide energy to several provinces. It would be the first in the Cardamoms to displace people, the others having been constructed in forested areas.
This is all part of plans to increase electricity capacity to meet a national demand forecast to double by 2020.
With over 60 projects worldwide, Sinohydro is China’s biggest dam-building company and is the third company to take on the controversial project. First China Southern Power Grid pulled out citing the fragile environment and more recently China Guodian Corporation departed saying that it was not economically viable.
This economic view is supported by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency. Its report for the Cambodian government concludes that the £200 million price tag will result in a high cost of electricity per unit compared with other dams, for the modest 108 megawatt output it would provide.
It also says the 16 mile long valley to be flooded is large compared to the electricity it would generate. Financing for the project is already guaranteed by the Chinese state Exim bank.
Is it just an excuse to log and grab land?
Comparing the dam with similar projects, activist Sothea says that it is primarily an excuse to exploit the natural resources through logging and mining. She sees eventual dam construction as merely the conclusion of an exploitative process.
Soon it becomes clear that the Minister of Mines and Energy is visiting regional capital Koh Kong to instruct local officials to carry out a series of meetings with the villagers in the valley.
Sothea explains the purpose:Â “The commune Chief calls meetings to force people to agree with him and to accept the compensation from the Government. He uses his role and brings the words from the top management especially from the Minister of Industry, mines and Energy.”
Camp activists decide to attend the first meeting to support the villagers. Early morning, mist shrouding the forest canopy, a fleet of laden scooters sets out down the waterlogged trail through the jungle to the valley.
Locals have packed the local school of Chum Noeb village. The commune headman speaks first and seeks opinions about the government’s compensation offer of five hectares of land for each family.
‘We will destroy the company’s machinery’
Mrs Hom Khat is the first of many women to speak out and flatly rejects the offer saying, “We don’t need any compensation because we are staying here on the lands of our ancestors. Our children will never forgive us if we move.”
Sothea speaks out reminding the audience that the project has not been officially approved and that the Government and company have recently stated that it will only go ahead after feasibility studies and fresh Environmental and Social Impact Assessments have been done.
She highlights that under these circumstances talk of compensation is premature and inappropriate.
The government official sent to oversee proceedings intervenes to say that this meeting is only for villagers to speak and that no more members of the youth group may do so and in future they must report to police. The youth group react angrily with passionate speeches about their freedom of speech, strongly rejecting the official’s demand.
Kum Chae, the commune Chief of neighbouring valley commune Prolay, is feared locally for his past role as a Khmer Rouge official. Locals say he has been circulating photos of Alex and a fellow activist in the community in an attempt to discredit them.
But residents of the valley are growing wise to the official line and are increasingly joining the growing movement of resistance. Boek Sowan of the Chong tribe in the Areng valley remains defiant:Â “If the company try to build a dam in the valley we will destroy their machinery.”
Published in The Ecologist.
Meet those fighting sand-dredging in Cambodia
Sand-dredging is big business, especially in Asia, where demand has sky-rocketed thanks to the booming construction industry.
The sleepy fishing village of Koh Sralao, situated on a small island in a mangrove- lined estuary, is in the frontline of the resistance against rampant sand-dredging.
‘Sweetheart Island is the only place we can fish for crab now. Many islands have been lost to the sand-dredging already,’ said fisher Lim Lon. With its houses on stilts strung out over the water, the isolated village of Koh Sralao in Cambodia’s southwest Koh Kong Province is far from the tranquil backwater that it might appear at first sight. It is at the forefront of a movement to halt the sand-dredging which, since 2007, has blighted this and many other communities along Cambodia’s rivers and coastline.
As our fishing boat sailed upriver through an abandoned dredging site, the mangroves lay fallen and dying where the river bank had collapsed. A farmer complained that his riverside fields had receded 20 metres from erosion since the arrival of the dredgers.
‘Before the dredging, the water was only two metres [deep] or less, and in some places there were sand banks, but now the water is at least five metres and some places eight,’ explained another fisher, Phen Sophany. ‘When the water reaches five to seven metres, there are only a few male crabs. Crabs need shallower waters for breeding.’ Even when the dredgers have moved on, the crabs don’t return.
Studies have demonstrated that if sand extraction is greater than the rate at which it is naturally replaced by sedimentary deposits, then erosion will take place, not just at the dredging site, but upriver and downstream too, largely because the greater river capacity increases the speed of the flow, exacerbating erosion and increasing the potential for flooding.
Despite a seeming abundance of sand, and its low cost relative to other mined commodities, rapidly escalating global demand has led to pressure on supplies, and salt-free river sand is particularly prized for use in construction work.
‘It still impacts us when the dredgers are working upstream, because all the muddy water flows downstream – and crabs can’t live in muddy water,’ explained Sophany.
By 2015, dredging was hitting the community hard. Catches were down, and many families had taken out high-interest loans from loan sharks to stay in business. Others ‘collected water snails in the mangroves, but now there are no snail stocks’. Some quit crab fishing altogether to seek work in the new economic zone factories in Koh Kong city, a two-hour boat ride away.
Asia’s development boom is a key global driver of global sand demand – with Singapore by far the biggest importer. In 2012 academic Pascal Peduzzi estimated that ‘the world’s use of aggregates for concrete can be estimated at 25.9 billion to 29.6 billion tonnes a year – enough to build a wall 27 metres high by 27 metres wide around the equator.’ He estimates that between 47 and 59 billion tonnes of aggregate and sand is mined every year.
Satisfying Singapore’s hunger for sand led neighbours Indonesia and Malaysia to experience dramatic environmental impacts at home – including, in Indonesia’s case, the disappearance of entire islands. One by one, neighbouring countries stopped exporting to Singapore, leaving regional countries such as the Philippines, Vietnam, Burma and Cambodia to replace supplies. In a bid to open up a new supply front, in March a Singaporean company reportedly held talks with the government of Bangladesh to explore a nationwide sand-dredging deal.
Escalating activism
In April 2015, when activists from NGO Mother Nature offered to help stop the sand-dredging works, many in Koh Sralao were only too keen to form a partnership. Together, they went from one sand-dredging barge to the next, demanding that they leave. To their surprise, the sand-miners complied. It was later discovered that, with no licence to dredge in the area, companies feared being exposed.
Mother Nature then started receiving calls about large-scale dredging operations from communities further west on the Andeung Teuk River. When activists arrived, they found more than 60 sand barges owned by the Direct Access sand-mining company.
The people who have benefited from all this, who have pocketed all this dirty money, are at the highest levels of government. ‘More than 100 people protested,’ says activist Sim Samnang, describing the flotilla of fisherfolk and activists who surrounded and boarded the barges. ‘We warned them away from the area, from our river.’ Each barge was carrying 10,000 cubic metres of sand to be transported out to sea and loaded onto giant cargo ships bound for Singapore.
The sand-dredging business is controlled by senior members of Cambodia’s ruling elite, notably Senator Ly Yong Phat, according to a report, ‘Shifting Sand’, by British NGO Global Witness. Ly Yong Phat is well known in Koh Kong Province, where he is known as the ‘King of Koh Kong’ for his widespread business dealings there.
In December 2016, five community fishers, activists (including this author) and a journalist were illegally detained by security guards from the Udum Seima Peanich Industry and Mine Co while visiting its dredging site on the Tatai River. Two of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s daughters, Hun Maly and Hun Mala, are listed as shareholders of the company.
Activists Sim Samnang, Try Sovikea and San Mala were imprisoned as a result of their efforts at the Andeung Teuk. ‘The government arrested us and left us in jail without trial for 10 months and 15 days,’ Sim told me in January from a secret location outside Cambodia, where the three were awaiting the outcome of their court appeal. Sim wasn’t hopeful: ‘The appeal court has summoned us to trial again in Phnom Penh, but we don’t trust them. Usually the Cambodian court is working under government power. It’s not independent, we cannot trust them. That’s why we came out of the country.’
At the appeal hearing their original sentence was upheld, and although they will avoid a further prison spell for now, they remain liable to pay $25,000 compensation to Direct Access, which brought the compensation case.5 Being in no position to pay the large sum, their situation remains precarious.
Sand-smuggling scam
‘The people who have benefited from all this, who have pocketed all this dirty money, [are] at the highest levels of government, and [in] some of the companies – which are more like mafia cartels,’ says Alejandro Gonzalez-Davidson, founding director of Mother Nature Cambodia. He was deported in February 2015, for opposing construction of Cambodia’s proposed Areng dam.
He explains how in October 2016 he uncovered a scandal involving millions of tons of illegally exported sand to Singapore. By investigating sand import and export trade figures available on the UN Commodity Trade Statistics Database, Mother Nature identified a large discrepancy in quantities of sand exported by Cambodia to Singapore. The discrepancy was valued at around $750 million.6 So where had the missing sand gone?‘Hundreds of millions of dollars have been stolen from the Cambodian people,’ says Gonzalez-Davidson.
The Ministry of Mines and Energy have repeatedly dismissed the discrepancy, with spokesperson Dith Tina saying there was no ‘concrete proof’ and that re-import and export of the sand through third-party countries might be responsible. The response of the Cambodian government to the scandal was temporarily to halt sand exports to look into the matter.
In December 2016, the Cambodian Parliament’s anti-corruption commission called on mines and energy minister SE Suy Sem to explain the discrepancy, but in a letter to the Singapore Ambassador on 7 March 2017, the Commission said that it ‘did not find the explanation satisfying’.
The letter went on to request that the Singapore government share full details and documentation of all its sand imports: ‘Failure to effectively allay these suspicions and to collaborate with us might tarnish the reputation of Singapore, a country regarded as being one of Asia’s most transparent and least corrupt.’
A farmer complained that his riverside fields had receded 20 metres from erosion since the arrival of the sand-dredgers
At the beginning of April, opposition parliamentarian and Commission member Son Chhay said that he had met with officials from the Singapore embassy, who had declined to provide the information requested. The Cambodia Daily reported Chhay as saying: ‘I think that the Singapore side is trying to hide something. They are not honest with us.’
The controversy remains unresolved. Meanwhile, in April Mother Nature’s activists discovered that construction of a sand-washing facility was under way deep inside a national protected area. They suspect dredging operations will restart at any time. ‘It’s quite evident that sand is too valuable, too much money has been made by a lot of people, dirty money, and they’re just trying to make sure that this resumes eventually,’ explains Gonzalez-Davidson.
The fish return
‘Fish have returned and dolphins have been spotted too,’ enthuses Mot Sopha. At Koh Sralao, things are looking up since the halt on sand-dredging. ‘We have money to repay our debts from buying fishing nets and boat equipment,’ her husband Sophany adds.
The community remains concerned, however, because some of the dredging boats have not left the area. Sophany remains undeterred. ‘Now we have changed our behaviour. We feel stronger than before. We will go and complain if they start dredging again,’ he concludes.
Sources
IOSR Journal of Pharmacy, Vol. 2, Issue 4 (July 2012), pp. 1-6
Environmental Development, 2014, vol. 11, p. 208-218
According to Commerce Ministry records.
Phoebe Seers ‘Singapore’s overdue response to Cambodian Sand trade data misses the point’, 17 January 2017 mlex.com
Published in New Internationalist Magazine
