On June 17, the United States (US) embassy in Phnom Phen announced that it is prematurely ending its $21 million flagship forest protection programme in Cambodia over concerns of continued deforestation and the government’s silencing of activists who speak out against the destruction of natural resources. Despite having invested over $100 million towards the protection of the timber-rich Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary, it has lost approximately 38,000 hectares, or approximately 9%, of its total forest cover over the past few decades. In fact, all of Cambodia’s forests remain endangered as deforestation continues at frightening rates. Overall, Cambodia has lost nearly 2.2 million hectares of tree cover between 2001 and 2018, which accounts for a quarter of its entire forest cover.
Cambodia is home to some of the most biodiverse forests in the world. It also has one of the largest remaining forests in the region. The rich ecosystem of Cambodian forests includes a variety of rich habitats, including rainforests, grasslands, and marshes. Its forests are also home to 55 globally threatened species, including gibbons, Asian elephants, nearly 45% of Cambodia’s bird species, and one-third of the country’s bat species. As threatened species lose their habitat at an alarming rate due to a disproportionate increase of human activity, the destruction of the forests makes it an issue with global ramifications. Rampant illegal hunting with wire snares, many mammals, lizards, birds, and reptiles are caught and sold in local markets or exported to China and Vietnam.
Apart from sustaining exotic wildlife, the protected area is home to 538 plant species and 80% of the most endangered indigenous tree species in the country. Crucially, the forests also support the daily livelihood of almost 80% of the population. However, logging for domestic purposes remains largely unregulated. As a result, multiple highly-prized timber species, such as rosewood, have already become extremely scarce. Loggers have also begun to cut down other valuable species, while new roads are cutting into sensitive areas breaking up habitats and facilitating illegal logging and poaching.
If logging and hunting activities continue at current rates, Cambodia faces the risk of widespread drought and flash floods, which would severely change its climate and farming practices. It would also potentially bring in a host of other problems, including eventual desertification, soil erosion, fewer crops, and increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
One need only look at West Africa to ascertain the severity of the worrying path Cambodia is heading down. Deforestation in West Africa is leading to long-term drought and a horde of accompanying problems like falling water levels, food insecurity, and migration. Originally, the Upper Guinean forest consisted of dense forest cover of approximately 216,000 sq km in 1920. But due to unregulated logging, slash-and-burn agriculture, mining, bushmeat hunting, and water pollution, the historically dense forest ecosystem has now been degraded to a series of fragmented areas separated by agricultural communities and deteriorated forested lands that cover only about 70,000 sq km today.
In Guinea, which retains 6% of these forests, farmers say that logging of the forest in higher altitudes is to blame for the lack of rain. In Senegal, wind erosion, deforestation, and climate change have severely impacted livestock and farms and led to increased migration. Similarly, southern Africa has also been experiencing its worst drought period in decades since October 2018. In the Sahel region, population growth has caused an increase in wood harvesting, illegal farming, and land-clearing for housing. Overall, desertification now affects about 46% of Africa. In fact, some statistics have shown that, since 1900, the Sahara desert has expanded by 250 kilometres to the south over a stretch of land from west to east that is 6,000 kilometres long.
Cambodia has already experienced a small taste of what it inevitably risks by destroying what should be protected lands. In 2016, the country battled an acute drought that among other reasons, was caused by the government beginning to award logging concessions to private companies from the mid-1990s in order to drive economic growth and create jobs for local communities. Consequently, roughly 39% of Cambodia’s total land was temporarily handed over to the private sector.
The destructive practice was nominally suspended in 2013, but the impacts are still felt today. What followed was a delayed monsoon season that wreaked havoc on farmers and the planting season. To make matters worse, El Niño hit the country around the same time and resulted in rising temperatures that further exacerbated an existing water shortage. Nearly 2.5 million people were affected due to a lack of drinking water and water for their farms. It also increased the risk of a cholera outbreak in the country. Furthermore, the drought took its toll on animal life, too, as hundreds of monkeys, buffaloes, elephants, and fish perished.
At the time, Keo Vy, a spokesperson for the National Committee for Disaster Management, remarked, “Previous droughts only affected parts of the country, but the current drought is affecting the whole.” If this is any foreshadowing of what the future holds, the government must take an active role in salvaging what is left of its forests and work towards the reforestation of the region.
Despite these well-documented risks, Cambodian authorities have not only denied the illegal activities but also blamed whistleblowers for insulting the work being done by park rangers. However, the truth is that the seven-million-plus hectares of protected landscapes are being managed by only 1,260 rangers. Moreover, even if there were sufficient rangers, the Cambodian chapter of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) agrees that “no single person can effectively monitor more than 5,000 hectares of land.”
Therefore, protection of these forests does not just require larger manpower but also calls for communities dependent on these forests for their livelihood must to be involved and educated on practices to best protect these lands. Involving the grassroots community is especially important considering that less than 10% of Cambodia’s forests and protected areas are under community management even though the daily lives and well-being of 80% of the country’s population are tied to the forest.
Before introducing such strategies, however, the Cambodian government must first acknowledge that there is a problem to begin with. So long as the government continues to turn a blind eye to illegal logging, hunting, and exotic animal sales, these indiscriminate activities will continue to bring Cambodia closer and closer to an ecosystem imbalance that threatens chronic climate and food crises.
Simultaneously, civil society should be supported to expand climate-sensitive agriculture. Zimbabwe, for instance, has incentivised new sustainable agriculture methods, including improving irrigation and water harvesting and encouraging farmers to grow grains that are more drought-resistant.
In China, the desertification of the Gobi desert spread to such a vast extent that buffer vegetation was removed due to farming, livestock grazing, urbanisation, and climate change. Although some argue that it may be a little late, the government is taking action to curb the spread further and has been planting trees across the border of the Gobi desert. Similarly, Thailand used the techniques of aerial reforestation by dropping millions of seed bombs across deforested lands. In addition, it also practised fire prevention, nurturing natural regeneration, and planting framework tree species. Likewise, Brazil is also currently reforesting 30,000 hectares of the Amazon forest.
While reforestation is possible, it takes an extremely long time to return the land to its original state. If Cambodia waits too long to take action, it risks unmanageable and unpredictable climatic events that result in multiple plants and animal species becoming endangered or extinct. Apart from the economic and ecological impacts of such a delay, there is also an added risk of an outbreak of a zoonotic disease, which, as the current pandemic has shown us, can be challenging to recover from, to say the least. The Cambodian government must pay heed to the evidence of climatic ruin from indiscriminate logging and pre-empt while it still has the luxury of time to do so.
Cambodia Must Overhaul Its Forestry Practices Before It’s Too Late
Cambodia is among the world’s most endowed countries that has not been drastically deforested yet. The government must take action against illegal logging now in order to prevent a chronic drought.
July 12, 2021
SOURCE: AFP