Golden memories ... សុវណ្ណអនុស្សារ

Convoy of trucks loaded with young logs at Bavet, Svay Rieng, Cambodia-Vietnam border [Image reproduced]

The effects of deforestation and subsequent flooding can be seen from space on ordinary satellite images. This image is from the Terra satellite in 2002.

An illegal logging camp in the Cardamom Mountains in Koh Kong Province, Cambodia

Cambodia has one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world, third to only Nigeria and Vietnam, according to a 2005 report conducted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).[1]

Cambodia's primary rainforest cover fell dramatically from over 70% in 1970 at the end of the Vietnam War to just 3.1% in 2007.[2] Deforestation is accelerating at an alarming rate, with overall rate of total forest loss at nearly 75% since the end of the 1990s. In total, Cambodia lost 25,000 square kilometres of forest between 1990 and 2005, 3,340 square kilometres of which was primary forest. As of 2007, less than 3,220 square kilometres of primary forest remain, with the result that the future sustainability of Cambodia's forest reserves is under severe threat.[3]

According to a 2015 report, U.K. environmental rights group Global Witness places Cambodian timber magnate Try Pheap at the center of a large illegal logging enterprise driving Cambodia's rarest tree species to the brink of extinction. The report concludes that the operation of the illegal logging is being done with the collusion of government and military officials with virtually all of the illegally cut and transported wood going to China[4]

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