Loggers Use Loophole to Decimate Cambodia's Disappearing Forest

***********************************************

WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

***********************************************

Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

http://forests.org/

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.

*******************************

RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:

Loggers Use Loophole to Decimate Cambodia's Disappearing Forest

5/1/97

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.

###RELAYED TEXT ENDS###

This document is a PHOTOCOPY for non-commercial, educational and

personal campaign use only. Recipients should seek permission from

the source for reprinting. All efforts are made to provide accurate,

timely pieces; though ultimate responsibility for verifying all

information rests with the reader. Check out our Gaia Forest

Conservation Archives at URL= http://forests.org/

Networked by Ecological Enterprises, gbarry@forests.org