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Illegal logging in Cambodia

Is the Cambodian government making efforts to combat illegal logging?

Introduction to the Economic Land Concessions and tenure rights over forest land

Cambodia has a land of 181,035 kilometers, among which 56.5% is the forest land, 32.1% agricultural land and 11.4% for the other land use purposes.. During the Khmer Rouge from 1975-1979, private land ownership was abolished. The Land Law 2001 introduced state public land and state private land that is mostly converted for Economic Land Concessions(ELC). It is estimated that 25% of rural poor are landless with an annual increase of 2%. 40% of the rural poor are also land-poor as the possession of less than 0.5 ha per household cannot produce enough food for subsistence.

The system of granting concessions was introduced under the French colonial system. The first concessions were initiated in 1874. The system of land concessions continued after independence, ceased during the Khmer Rouge and was reintroduced after the Land Law 1992. Legally MAFF is the only authority for granting ELCs, practically the other authorities are also granted rights for concessions. During 1993-2002, about 6.5 million ha, 70% of the forest cover were under concession. In the wake of negative impacts from the concessions, this system was abolished in 2002. With an insignificant portion of timber supply from the Production Forests and Plantations and very little data were found on timber loggings from mining and hydropower projects, the EUFLEGT Facility (2014) studied that Economic Concession Lands become the dominating supply of timber in Cambodia. In Cambodia, the Permanent Forest Estates (PFE) are consisted of Permanent Forest Reserves and Private Forests. The PFEs are further classified to Production forests, protection forests and conversion forestland for other development purposes. According to the Forestry Law, all natural production forest types are state property managed by the Forestry Administration, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fishery. The State shall recognize and ensure the traditional user rights of the local communities living within or near the Permanent Forest Reserves, for the purpose of traditional customs, beliefs, religions and living. The traditional user rights for forest products and by-products shall not require the permit. The MAFF has the authority to allocate any part of the PFR to a community living inside or near a forest area in the form of a Community Forest. .

A snapshot of the illegal logging

From the early 1970s to the mid-1990s, the forest cover in Cambodia has decreased sharply from 75% to less than 35% , mainly due to the illegal, but officially sanctioned logging, by the Royal Cambodian Army Forces and Khmer Rouge. . To be specific, Legal logging accounts for 33% of logging activity and illegal logging accounts for 2/3 of the logging.. In 1997, 2,024,000-3,155,000 m3, 70% of the total harvest were recorded as illegally logged. In terms of profitability, illegally logged wood earns USD120 per m3, 2.4 times more than that in the legal concession lands. .. Cambodia first brought the term "conflict timber"- conflict financed or sustained through the harvest and sale of timber or conflict emerging as a result of competition over timber or other forest resources- to international attention, as the remnant groups of the Khmer Rouge sold large stands of forest to purchase arms to continue political struggle..

It is generally agreed that the Cambodian sate is an authoritarian one-party state and Hun Sen and his networks are in full control. The predatory state apparatus is founded on coercive patronage networks between business elites, the prime minister, the CPP and government officials to benefit a minority of elites.. Powerful individual actors such as the military, police, high-policy makers, politicians are thus highly complicit in illegal logging and timber trade.

The map of Cambodia

Illegally logged timber transportation

Framing the problem

Reboredo have studied different causes of illegal logging such as poverty, weak governance and the absence of sustainable forest management, though they are not universally applicable to all the cases where illegal logging is found. .The illegal logging in Cambodia is a mixture of all the abovementioned reasons and even more .

Political background

Beginning with low-level cross-border raids and soon escalating into full-fledged war in December 1978, the Vietnam and Cambodia had a warring period that lasts till 1991.Having experienced two decades of warfare and a western-led economic embargo and a ruling authority-initiated genocide of a fifth of its population, Cambodia in the late 1980s came to a transition period. In particular to forests, forests were transmitted from Khmer Rouge- controlled territory into timber production

Illegal logging on (conflicting)concession land systems

The actual management of the production forests take place through concession agreements with concessionaires. 63% was allocated as concession lands and some concessions even overlap. In Ratanakiri, the combined allocation of protected areas, forestry and agricultural concessions exceeds 30% of the total land. Even national level allocations cover 102% of the land area in provinces. The land overlaps might be partly attributed to a lack of vertical and horizontal communications among authorities at different levels. Even for the legal concessionaires, they may be readily evicted by overseas competitors.With the absence or insufficiently executed law on the land, ambiguous land tenure claims as abovementioned are normative. And in most cases of the two claimants of land, it is always the more powerful party- the agent of the sate that win the battle. Illegally cut logs found stockpiled in the concession areas could be used with ad hoc permits or licenses, or sale of confiscated logs through auctions. The Collection permits offers an efficient way of collecting revenue from illegally cut logs. In general, this sytem has left loopholes for the occurrence of illegal logging. .

Weak governance

According to the Transparency International report, the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) of Cambodia is 21 out of 100 in 2015, ranking 150th among the 168 countries surveyed, and there is scant or no budget openness. . As timber logging, transportation and trade requires infrastructure, capital and coordinated skills, Governments, either in the form of the military and other security forces, are more advantageous than other constituency groups to leverage resources and are almost always involved in the exploitation of timber as revenues. In November 1995, 30 mainly foreign logging companies, were granted 6.3 million hectares of forest as concessions, which is three times the area that can support commercial logging. . The revenues from these operations almost entirely bypass the national budget and represent an absolute loss to the country .

A case study: Cross-border illegal logging

The Remote borderlands are generally isolated from central state Province and are generally regarded as marginalized sites of lawlessness. The Cambodian- Lao borderlands is an isolated locale rich in natural resources but poor in basic infrastructure. With geopolitical insignificance and inaccessibility of national capital flows, it becomes a hotspot for illegal cross-border logging of luxury timbers. . Meanwhile, this area was marked as conflicts and political turmoil when Cambodia and Vietnam has a war and illegal logging happens to support the war or weapon.

Sekong village in Stung Treng Province, about 40km south of Attapeu and Champassak Provinces in Laos, is close to the Cambodia’s largest national park- Virachey National Park. It has 900 villagers and many have been involved in the illegal cross-border logging of luxury rosewood timber such as Siamese rosewood. Compared to tradition income-earning activities resin-collection, fishing and hunting, they have much higher returns (US$300-3000 per trip) from logging rosewood paid by Cambodian Timber traders and soldiers. In addition, transporting these illegally logged luxury timbers offers much higher tax than traditional communities to the Cambodian border checkpoints, and offered corruption opportunities for the soldiers and officers at the border whose salary is only US$25 per month.

Implications

Environmental

Illegal logging has serious environmental problems such as biodiversity degradation, carbon stock reduction, reduced water quality, the outbreak of natural disasters among others. Once Illegal logging occurs at a large destructive scale, it leads to the forest conversion and an alarming rate of deforestation and forest degradation.As some illegal logging occurs also in the protected areas, rare plants and animals may become threatened too.

Deforestation and forest degradation become the greatest source of carbon emissions. Sasaki studied that carbon stock in production forest declined from 130.5 MgC ha-1 in 1993 to 115.2 MgC ha-1 in 2002. , contributing to the increasing carbon emissions to the atmosphere.

Economic

Illegal logging generates a large amount of benefits for the few elites as well as provides secretive livelihood opportunities for involved communities. Compared to the economic benefits, more negative economic implications pose great challenges both for the nation and the industry sector. As illustrated before, the revenue from illegal logging often bypassed the national revenue and thus cannot be allocated for education, medical care and other public sectors. Illegally logged timber discourages sustainable management and sustainable logging practices, resulting in unfair completion with other legally logged companies with the result of negative externality. What is more, the local communities or even local authorities have not acquired a fair amount of the 'economic rent' and Payment for Ecosystem(PES) at their sacrifice of accessibility and benefit rights to forest(ABS).

Cultural

Forests serve for cultural and spiritual purposes. Cambodia is a Buddhism-believing country and Buddhists believe trees are like our parents and protecting trees means to eliminate the suffering of human beings. Some monks in Cambodia conserved the biggest community forest and won the UNDP Equator Prize for creating a best practice for biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation.

Social

Mulcahy & Boissière stated that 80% of the rural poor depend on forests and agricultural land for their subsistence and livelihood. Forest resources contribute to 30-42% of total household income for the rural people. Illegal logging is destructive for the forest and harmful for the communities for whom the forest provides a livelihood, especially for women. Cambodia has been implementing REDD+ projects which are aimed to reduce deforestation and forest degradation. However, the true situation is communities living in areas covered by REDD+ projects are being deprived of the accessibility to forests, livestock husbandry which interfere with their traditional way of life and livelihood opportunities. As such, conflicts between wood industry concerns and local communities are prevalent. As shown in the video, the world food program estimated approximately local communities are severely affected by the illegal logging as 3 million communities are living 30 km of logging concessions . If they lose both the land for rice production and the resin trees inherited from their parents, they may find themselves and their children, grandchildren hardly be fed.

Combating illegal logging

The state forest authority should have aim both for efficiency, cost effectiveness, transparency and equability and have an auditing system. The government shall carefully guide the preparation for establishing chain of custody certification system and timber legality assurance system to ensure that future wood processing is based on legally harvested timber, and processed timber from Cambodia can be sustainably exported. The government shall work out a system to ensure the timber processing industry is in balance with its source of supply. .. As three neighbor countries Thailand, Laos and Vietnam are under negotiation processes of the Voluntary Partnership Agreement under EUFLEGT. Cambodia government may could also consider to be part of the international commitment. The top agenda for the forest authority is to reform its land system, underline law compliance, and implement the Community Forestry Project, imparting communities with the Accessibility and Benefit Rights(ABS) and to solve the conflict between the local community, forest management authority and concession holders. The timber industries and enterprises should have more Corporate Social Responsibilities (CSR) and the Social License to Operate(SLO) and strengthen the concept of product of origins. Many international non-governmental organizations like the Environment Investigation Agency, Global Witness, Greenpeace and TRAFFIC shall continue to act as watchdogs in the illegal logging, processing, transportation and trade and provide capacity building programs in terms of law enforcement.

Conclusion

Illegal logging in Cambodia is a complex issue shaped by different political, economic and social factors at the national and international levels. Due to scant or insufficiently recorded data from the authority, illegally logged timber may be underestimated at certain periods. Illegal timber harvesting has become a major threat to deforestation and forest degradation in Cambodia. Though illegal logging has brought significant economic benefits to the political, military, business elites and even local communities, the negative environmental, political, social and cultural implications cannot be neglected. Solving this issue needs long-term joint efforts from the national and international communities and requires positive changes on the current legal or operation systems. At the national level, strengthening forest law enforcement, improving forest governance and improving the land use system become the top priorities. At the international level, those countries and industries who wish to ‘offset’ their logging damage through carbon market and REDD projects should reconsider this issue to avoid the ‘leakage’. Instead, they should contribute to establish a well-monitored chain of custody or supply chain of legally-logged timber. As Cambodia is still one of the least developed countries whose economic development depends highly on natural resources, corruption in Cambodia cannot be halted within short period of time and international timber demand is still robustly high, there is still a long way to go to alleviate or halt illegal logging in the few years to come.