Deforestation in Cambodia: paying the price for Cambodian elites’ blind greed

“Why do we have to convert forest? Forest that is supposed
to be protected. HE Son Chhay asked, what area of forest do we have to protect?
Please be specific. I want to explain about conversion...

According to the evolution of the national economy... For
example, in Malaysia when oil palm or rubber brought a high price, the
government decided to immediately cut the forest to plant rubber or oil palms. When
the price of rubber fell, they cut down the rubber trees to plant oil palms.”

Chan Sarun

Ministry of Agriculture

Chan Sarun [also known as Ngor Hong Srun]. The
younger brother of the late Cambodian-American actor Haing S. Ngor, Chan
is the son of an ethnic Chinese father and a Khmer mother. The Ngor family had
been involved in the timber business in pre-war Cambodia. The late actor is ‘rumoured’
or known to have lost a finger through an accident with timber processing
equipment. However, he blamed the Khmer Rouge for
having sawn off the finger! Chan ‘maybe’ similarly covering up his own forest
mismanagement policies, as well as those of his ruling party, by holding up the
Malaysian example? [School of Vice]

“When I went to the National Assembly, they asked why I want
the land; I said I want it to plant my own rice, corn, and sesame. If we give
it to them they’ll plant rubber. When will we have anything to eat if they plant
rubber? It will take five to seven years; I may die before I have anything to
eat!

It is too bad but we don’t know what to do.”

A Khmer villager

Cambodia's rainforest going up in smokes. 

Up to thirty percent of the rain that falls in tropical forests is water that the rainforest has recycled into the atmosphere. Water evaporates from the soil and vegetation, condenses into clouds, and falls again as rain in a perpetual self-watering cycle. In addition to maintaining tropical rainfall, the evaporation cools the Earth’s surface. In many computer models of future climate, replacing tropical forests with a landscape of pasture and crops creates a drier, hotter climate in the tropics. Some models also predict that tropical deforestation will disrupt rainfall pattern far outside the tropics, including China, northern Mexico, and the south-central United States. [Earth Observatory]

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