More than 930,000 hectares of state public land inside protected conservation areas are now eligible for privatization, according to a November 30 sub-decree signed by Prime Minister HE.

People in protected areas across 15 provinces are now able to receive recognition for land claims as identified by provincial officials and overseen by the Ministry of Environment (MoE), according to the sub-decree and a June order from the Council of Ministers.

Sub-decree 245, on the surface, will provide communities and individuals with long-standing presence inside designated conservation sites known as protected areas the opportunity to secure legal land use rights and land titles

Yet conservationists fear the still opaque sub-decree will be abused, allowing government officials to legalize existing land grabs in these areas and launder land giveaways to the rich, powerful and well-connected.

“Even if some local communities do end up having titles for their lands, which on paper should be a good thing, the fact is that a substantial percentage of these communities will end up being pressured or fooled into selling their land,” said Alejandro Gonzalez-Davidson, co-founder of environmental activist group Mother Nature.

Koh Kong was the first province to privatize protected areas after the Prime Minister’s July 2020 statement. A March 2021 sub-decree privatizing 126,928 hectares in protected areas quickly led to vast amounts of land being siphoned off to land speculators and powerful officials, according to a Mongabay investigative report.

“Every time we hear about a re-writing of the boundaries of protected areas, we see how the total size of the country’s protected forests diminishes and is degraded further, how influential tycoons and/or families of the [ruling] Cambodian People’s Party elite end up with even more land concessions, and how local communities end up in an even worse state than before,” Gonzalez-Davidson said.