- Cambodia’s environment minister has ordered a ban on forest clearance at a hydropower project site where activists and media, including Mongabay, previously reported indications of illegal logging.
- The Stung Meteuk hydropower project is being developed by a company under Ly Yong Phat, a ruling party senator notorious for a long history of environmentally and socially destructive businesses.
- In April, Mongabay documented the illegal logging operations at the project site, where logging routes had been cut leading into the nearby Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary.
- Activists have welcomed the order to halt forest clearance, but say they’re skeptical the ban will be enforced against such a powerful figure, noting that timber processing continues at the site.
PHNOM PENH — In a rare move to combat forest crimes, Cambodian Environment Minister Eang Sophalleth on Sept. 2 banned all forest clearance at the site of a dam project in the country’s southwest.
The ban came after multiple incidents of illegal logging inside a protected area were reported, including by Mongabay, in connection to the Stung Meteuk hydropower project in Koh Kong and Pursat provinces.
However, activists monitoring the logging operations on the ground remain skeptical over the efficacy of the ban, noting that timber processing continues at the site of the hydropower project.
In a letter dated Sept. 2 and addressed to Ly Yong Phat, chair of Steung Meteuk Hydropower Co. Ltd., Sophalleth ordered the company to temporarily suspend its activities related to clearing forest for the 150-megawatt dams’ reservoirs, as well as the processing of logged timber.
After forest crimes were reported to him by the Pursat provincial environmental department, Sophalleth’s letter detailed the numerous incidents of illegality linked to the $440 million hydropower project, including transporting timber without permission, logging and collecting timber outside of the designated areas, as well as transporting and processing timber without paying taxes.
Mongabay previously documented the illegal logging operations that have sprung up under the cover of the Stung Meteuk project since it broke ground in late 2023. During a visit to the project site in April, Mongabay uncovered logging routes that had been cut from inside the dam reservoir basins into the roughly 362,000-hectare (895,000-acre) Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary where a REDD+ project is under development.
The sanctuary houses a wide array of wildlife species, many of which are listed as threatened under the IUCN Red List, that found refuge within the rugged terrain of the Cardamom Mountains, an isolated, remote and verdant rainforest. The mountainous nature of the Cardamoms, their propensity for intense rains and the relatively low population density have left the forests in far better condition than much of those that remain across Cambodia.
But this hasn’t prevented loggers from trying to smuggle valuable timber out of one of the last, best rainforests in Cambodia. And well-connected tycoons have historically cleared swaths of forest under the cover of building hydropower dams.
When contacted by Mongabay, Sophalleth verified the letter, which has since been widely circulating online in Cambodia, and said the suspension of logging will remain in place at the Stung Meteuk site “until the company has a proper mechanism [for forest management] and management team in place.”
The company in question is one of the many controlled by infamous tycoon and ruling party senator Ly Yong Phat, once dubbed the “King of Koh Kong” in a leaked diplomatic cable, whose wealth has largely derived from a range of environmentally and socially destructive businesses across the southwest of Cambodia. Natural resources from timber to sand have buoyed the senator’s influence within Cambodia’s ruling party, where he sits as a member of the central party committee and has been entrusted with numerous infrastructure projects, of which Stung Meteuk is just the latest.
However, Ly Yong Phat’s notoriety recently went global after he was sanctioned by the United States Treasury Department for his alleged involvement in human trafficking and cybercrimes on Sept. 12 this year. The Treasury Department made no mention of his natural resource grabs across the Cardamoms, but did sanction his eponymous conglomerate, LYP Group. Ly Yong Phat’s Stueng Meteuk Hydropower company lists an LYP Group email address as a contact detail, according to Ministry of Commerce records.
Will the ban be enforced?
As government institutions and senior political figures close ranks around the sanctioned senator in the fallout of the Treasury Department’s announcement, the question of how effective a logging ban at the Stung Meteuk project site will be remains murky.
Since Mongabay’s visit in April, activists who frequently monitor illegal logging operations, including those at Stung Meteuk, reported that logging had intensified considerably in recent months, despite the onslaught of Cambodia’s rainy season.
Forest activist Tat Oudom, who visited the site of the Stung Meteuk hydropower project in the week following Sophalleth’s ban on logging, said stockpiles of recently felled timber were visible across each of the three cascading dams in the project. Oudom’s team found piles of sawn planks and unprocessed round logs both inside the designated reservoirs and outside.
“There used to be many types of trees, including types like kronhung [rosewood],” Oudom said. “However, the premium wood species, known as grade one, are no longer available. Now, there is only less valuable wood, such as to sralao [Lagerstroemia calyculata], ch’teal [Dipterocarpus alatus], and sokram [Xylia xylocarpa].”
These valuable timber species have been excessively logged across Cambodia, but according to Oudom, those being logged by Ly Yong Phat’s company are being sent to a storage facility within Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary. Fresh tire tracks from timber trucks along logging routes indicated to Oudom that the logging, or at least the transport of timber, was ongoing in spite of the ban.
When asked whether he felt the environment minister’s suspension would be honored by Ly Yong Phat, Oudom said the most important step was to stamp out low-level corruption among local authorities, particularly among Ministry of Environment rangers.
“To eliminate corruption, they must have ethics and professionalism, and their salaries should be sufficiently increased — when people have enough, they won’t steal or accept bribes,” he said. “It’s also crucial to monitor them using multiple levels of authority. It’s not enough to rely solely on local authorities to combat crime, monitor and investigate.”
In a September interview with online outlet Eco-Business, Environment Minister Sophalleth was quoted as saying, “We are taking a zero-tolerance approach towards illegal loggers. There is no excuse, we will make sure those who run afoul of the law go to jail.”
In the same interview, Sophalleth appeared to blame foreign media outlets for suggesting that illegal logging is “happening every day in Cambodia.”
It remains to be seen how Sophalleth’s zero-tolerance approach to illegal logging will fare when dealing with such politically connected perpetrators as Ly Yong Phat, or how the new ban will be enforced on the ground.
Too soon to tell?
Requesting anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the press, a soldier stationed at a military base nearby the Stung Meteuk hydropower project site told Mongabay that it’s difficult to judge whether the ban is effective, given that construction has paused due to workers returning to their homes for the upcoming Pchum Ben holiday.
“The recent rains have seen the river level rise, so the roads are difficult to access right now,” the soldier said. “The Ministry of Environment has set up stations around 2 kilometers [1.2 miles] from the basin, so I’m not sure if logging is still happening now, but I think they will resume when rainy season ends.”
The soldier suggested that if reports of logging do reach the Ministry of Environment’s rangers, then they will likely investigate alongside conservationists.
One key actor in this part of Cambodia is Wildlife Alliance, a New York-headquartered NGO that works in partnership with the Ministry of Environment to operate REDD+ projects in the Cardamoms.
Suwanna Gauntlett, director of Wildlife Alliance, previously told Mongabay that rangers from both the NGO and the Ministry of Environment had been denied entrance to monitor logging at the Stung Meteuk hydropower project site, but that they were aware of trespass logging linked to the project.
Gauntlett said she had no new information regarding illegal logging at the site and declined to speculate on the efficacy of the ban or its enforcement.
Meanwhile Eng Rasmey, acting director of the Pursat provincial environmental department, declined to give specific details about how his team would monitor timber extraction at the dam site, but said his department has the power to enforce the law.
“As for the department, it has the authority to implement [the ban] according to legal principles and continues [to implement] procedures,” Rasmey said.
But for Oudom and his team, skepticism reigns.
“Will they dare say no to the government or their superiors when the company owners are powerful people who financially support the ruling party?” he said. “Will those responsible for protecting the forest and natural resources dare to speak up or resist the development projects of powerful tycoons like Ly Yong Phat? It’s good that they have temporarily suspended deforestation, but the most important thing is whether the government has the will to protect [the forest] or not.”
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