Loggers Use Loophole to Decimate Cambodia's Disappearing Forest
5/2/97
OVERVIEW, SOURCE & COMMENTARY by EE
The Christian Science Monitor reports that out of control logging has
put Cambodia "on the verge of an ecological disaster." Cambodia is
certainly one of the hot spots for illicit logging.
g.b.
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Loggers Use Loophole to Decimate Cambodia's Disappearing Forest
5/1/97
Copyright 1997 by Christian Science Monitor
POLITICS OF TIMBER
Once home to pristine forests that covered more than 70 percent of its
territory, Cambodia may be on the verge of an ecological disaster.
Fueled by civil war, political strife, and greed, unchecked logging is
contributing to the rapid disappearance of remaining woodlands.
Between 1973 and 1993, 3.6 million acres of the country's forest were
lost and much of the remaining area was negatively affected, says a
report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
And there are few signs that the rate of deforestation has diminished.
In fact, loggers are using a loophole to circumvent a recently adopted
ban on timber exports from Cambodia.
"The process is really out of control," says Masakazu Kashio, an
official for the FAO in Bangkok.
The biggest threat is to Cambodia's Tonle Sap (Great Lake), which has
been described as one of the richest freshwater fishing grounds in
the world. As a result of deforestation, the lake is silting up.
Cambodian Environment Minister Mok Mareth warned that at the present
rate, the lake could disappear within 25 years.
Concerns about the government's lax logging policy led the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) last year to halt a $20-million loan
to Cambodia. And in response to international pressure, Cambodian
officials also instituted a complete ban on the export of logs at the
end of last year.
But Thai loggers are taking advantage of a legal loophole in the ban
by setting up sawmills in Cambodia and shipping the timber across the
border as "processed" wood.
Directly across the border from this Thai village a thriving weekend
furniture market has sprung up. Until a few years ago this region was
a stronghold of the Khmer Rouge, the Maoist revolutionaries who killed
more than 1 million Cambodians during their reign of terror from 1975
to 1979. Now, a constant stream of rough-cut furniture flows past
bored soldiers in what one Thai shopper described as "a mountain of
wood" waiting for sale on the Cambodian side.
Some 40 miles east of Chong Chom, in the Thai town of Khu Khan, a
sawmill said to be on land owned by the fearsome one-legged Khmer
Rouge Gen. Ta Mok sits silent. Chang Gao, who claims to run the mill,
says that the place used to employ 40 workers but has been shut for
eight months. Everyone has gone to work in Cambodia, he adds,
including his son, one of some 500 Thais now said to be working at
sawmills that have sprung up across the border.
"The logging industry still exists," says Supalak Ganjanakhundee, a
local journalist who covers the timber trade. "They've just changed
their location and form of operation."
For a long time, the Khmer Rouge has been blamed by the Cambodian
government for much of the logging mayhem. According to Global
Witness, a London-based environmental and human rights group that
monitors the timber trade, the guerrilla group was making between $10
million and $12 million a month by selling timber to Thai logging
firms from its strongholds along the northern and eastern border
regions.
But Khmer Rouge involvement in the trade has dropped considerably
over the past year due to the defections last summer of some of its
top leaders. The Thai government has also cracked down on the movement
of logs from Khmer Rouge areas as a result of provisions in the US
government's 1997 Foreign Operations Act, which prohibits aid to the
military of any country which "is not acting vigorously" to stop the
logging trade.
But the role being abandoned by the Khmer Rouge is being picked up
by others, says Simon Taylor of Global Witnesses. Cambodia's co-prime
ministers, Prince Norodom Ranariddh and Hun Sen, have been accused by
his group of doling out huge concessions to international logging
firms equivalent to the country's entire remaining forested areas.
"More than $400 million should have been generated from timber
that we know went out in 1995 and 1996, yet by December 1996 only $10
million had ended up in the Cambodian Finance Ministry," he notes.
"An amount equivalent or greater to the entire national budget has
just been spirited away."
Last March, Phnom Penh reached an agreement with the IMF in which
it pledged to improve its management of the timber trade. But many
doubt its ability to control logging in ex-Khmer Rouge areas, which
are only nominally controlled by the government.
"The Cambodian government has no means to stop or even monitor the
people working in those areas," Mr. Ganjanakhundee says.