the latest:

Hundreds of families in Preah Vihear, Kratie and Siem Reap confronted environmental officials and soldiers in August amid land disputes, including changes to protected area boundaries that are uprooting them from their farmland.

ELC data from Licadho | © MapTiler © OpenStreetMap contributors
New Chob Som Nature Area
In Siem Reap, around 100 soldiers armed with AK-47s uprooted a community’s mango trees, alleging they were using the disputed area illegally, according to a CamboJA News report.

A community resident, in Svay Loeu district’s Kantuot commune, told the media outlet that the armed soldiers arrived on August 28 and destroyed 500 of their mango trees on 5 hectares of land.

https://kamnotra.io/en/2023/09/in-prote ... destroyed/

In the eyes of the government, investors and power brokers, land is perhaps the most important resource in Cambodia. The thirst for land has resulted in the shredding of forests, filling up of essential lakes, reclamation of the sea and destruction of natural resources.

Cambodian citizens have been affected or involved in at least 120 land conflicts across the country in the four years from 2019 to 2023. These incidents span nearly all of the country’s 25 provinces and municipalities, and mostly involve state land that was transferred to companies, tycoons, connected individuals and government officials and their family members.

full story
https://kamnotra.io/en/in-dispute/

The government has a ‘masterplan’ for the coastal province of Preah Sihanouk, with tourist meccas built on land given to elite families while the poor and powerless face the bulldozers

Theirs is not an isolated situation. A wave of tourism and housing projects is transforming the coast of Preah Sihanouk province. Signs of development are everywhere: Along the curve of Ream Bay, trucks dump sand into the Gulf of Thailand for a multibillion-dollar megaproject called the Bay of Lights, 934 hectares (2,300 acres) to include luxury homes, a beach club, go-kart track, and a reverse bungee jump.

A few kilometres north, excavators dig up a hillside where signs advertise a new gated community overlooking the bay. To the south, cranes loom over the edge of the national park where tourist resorts are being built.

..........
On the tourist island of Koh Rong Sanloem, piles of rubble, stacked-up mattresses and tangled electrical cords litter half of Saracen Bay beach after about 10 resorts and businesses were demolished in February. A few still stand daubed with red paint and eviction notices.

When people began settling the island a decade ago, it had no electricity or running water. Even today, the island remains sleepy and idyllic beyond the string of beach bungalows and Khmer-style wooden resorts along Saracen Bay.


Sky Beach Resort on Koh Rong Sanloem is being demolished to make way for new developments

....

In August the government approved investment plans for 19 of Preah Sihanouk’s 32 islands. So far, Koh Rong Sanloem, the largest of the province’s islands, has been spared. Dimanche confirmed in February that one of the companies, Cambodia-registered Emario Shonan Marine Corporation, was going ahead with a project on Koh Rong Sanloem, but gave no details. Neither Dimanche nor another deputy governor responded to requests from the Guardian for comment; multiple calls to Emario Shonan were not returned.

Land giveaways are accelerating across Cambodia, often favouring the elite. In Preah Sihanouk, at least 39 giveaways have privatised 3,802 hectares (nearly 15 square miles) since late 2018, according to Licadho. Family members of a senator, the prime minister’s daughters, and a tax department official are, says Licadho, among those who have benefited.

full story:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/ ... hing-lives

Written nearly 2 1/2 years ago and nothing has changed, if anything, its gotten worse ;-(

Lands Grabs and Other Destructive Environmental Practices in Cambodia Test the International Criminal Court
Five years ago, the ICC’s prosecutor said she would consider environmental crimes. Now, environmentalists and human rights activists want her to deliver.

Three leading climate and human rights nonprofits have asked the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in the Hague to pursue rampant “land grabbing” by the government of Cambodia and its commerce partners as a crime against humanity under the court’s jurisdiction.

In an open letter to Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda on Tuesday, Global Witness, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and Climate Counsel said that, since 2002, at least 830,000 Cambodians have been affected, many illegally forced off their land, by the government and various corporations involved in timber and other resource extraction activities.

“The Cambodia situation offers a unique opportunity for the ICC to engage with the single greatest threat facing humankind—the climate and environmental emergency,” the letter said. “In many countries around the world, land grabbing is the harbinger for illegal resource exploitation, persecution of indigenous people, and environmental destruction.”

......

From 2001 to 2018, the Southeast Asian country lost nearly a quarter of its tree cover, an area nearly the size of New Jersey, according to a report by Global Forest Watch that used satellite data from the University of Maryland.

The data shows that deforestation in the country has accelerated significantly since 2002, when senior members of the Cambodian government, its security forces and government-connected business leaders allegedly began a campaign of illegal land grabs from both public and privately owned properties.

After seizing land, the government often granted long-term leases, called economic land concessions, to companies from a variety of countries for agriculture, mining and other development projects. The government has defended the concessions as part of the country’s plan to develop its economy, but the benefits have accrued mainly to the country’s ruling class, according to the complaint.
...............
“They’re treating the country like a personal bank account,” said Patrick Alley, co-founder of Global Witness, a London-based watchdog organization that has issued reports linking government corruption to deforestation.

full story
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/2303 ... a-ecocide/