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ENVIRONMENT: Donors Overlooking Cambodia’s Forests – Global Witness

Sonny Inbaraj

BANGKOK, Dec 13 2004 (IPS) - The World Bank might have castigated Cambodia for not doing enough to curb illegal logging and the misuse of state resources by the rich and powerful, but a leading environmental monitor says this is a case of doing too little, too late.

In its communique at the end of a two-day donors’ meeting on Dec. 7 in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, the World Bank said it wanted to see the existing moratorium on logging continued.

It also sought increased transparency in state management of natural resources through the immediate public disclosure of existing contracts.

”In natural resources management there was also some progress. Forest concessions have been suspended. Public disclosure has improved, and environment and social impact assessment guidelines have been used for sustainable forestry management plans,” said Ian Porter, the World Bank Group’s Cambodia country director.

But he warned: ” These developments have been offset, however, by the continuation of illegal logging and the very visible governance failures associated with the misuse of state resources by the rich and powerful.”

The World Bank’s comments might seem vocal on the subject of corruption in Cambodia, but the London-based environmental monitor Global Witness is not impressed.

”The donors have been making noise since 1996. What’s been said now is not new. They seem to be going through the motions – there’s a lot of hot air but nothing concrete,” said Jon Buckrell, the lead campaigner for Global Witness.

”Upon being confronted with the extent of the problem in the forest sector, however, the Bank has retreated from its initial insistence on comprehensive reform; undermining the forestry reform process and its own credibility in the process,” added Buckrell in an interview with IPS.

Initiated in 2000, the World Bank’s 30 million U.S. dollar Structural Adjustment Credit (SAC) to Cambodia incorporated a range of conditions concerning forest sector management.

The Cambodian government would be required to fulfill these in order to trigger release of the loan’s second tranche of 15 million dollars. While by no means comprehensive, the SAC conditions encompassed structural and regulatory changes critical to the success of forest sector reform.

But the on-the-ground successes had been difficult to quantify, amidst rising corruption and increasing cases of illegal logging. Despite this, in December 2003, the World Bank released the second and final tranche of 15 million dollars and has pledged more funds for 2005.

”The World Bank sought to justify itself by arguing that the World Bank had honoured its commitments. This completed a shift that saw the Bank moving from a firm stand on forest sector reform in Cambodia to endorsing breaches of its own lending conditions,” Buckrell pointed out.

Ironically, the Bank released the 15 million dollars at the end of 2003 despite its own findings in the Poverty and Investment Climate Survey (PICS) that Cambodia was suffering from ”weak rule of law, bureaucratic costs and corruption”. Companies participating in this survey cited corruption as their main constraint.

The money that has been made from legal and illegal logging and the political influence that it represents is staggering in Cambodia.

The official figure, for instance, for revenue from timber sales between January 1996 and April 1997 was less than 15 million dollars. However, the estimated value for logs and sawed timber exported or illegally sold within Cambodia is well over 100 million dollars for the same period.

According to environmental monitors, when the value of cut wood waiting in stockpiles along many rural Cambodian roads is included, the figure rises by nearly 30 million dollars.

”The Cambodian government must find the whole donors’ group process absolutely hilarious. Each year they fail to meet their benchmarks and yet the donors give them money,” said Buckrell.

The donors agreed to pour in 504 million dollars to support Cambodia’s development programmes in 2005, an amount lower than the 635 million dollars per year that this South-east Asian country received in assistance from the donors when they last met in 2002.

The administration of Prime Minister Hun Sen had been hoping to receive a pledge of 1.8 billion dollars for a three-year period, beginning in 2005.

Global Witness began working in Cambodia in 1995, acting as an independent monitor to the government offices tasked to catalogue forest crimes. The group’s remit was to develop the government’s capacity to detect and crack down on illegal logging.

But it has long been at odds with the Cambodian authorities, especially since it released documents accusing government officials of being involved in illegal logging. The group also accused the police force of using excessive force to break up a protest by forest-dependent communities in December.

In early 2003, Prime Minister Hun Sen fired the independent forestry watchdog, accusing it of unfair bias in its reports of illegal logging.

The World Bank’s Cambodia chief, Porter, said the Hun Sen government had agreed to pass an anti-corruption law, bring key cases to trial, and establish a legal framework effective across the country.

”If there is little progress, then we would certainly be concerned that the overall pledges for Cambodia could well come down,” he told reporters.

But Buckrell remains sceptical.

”Not one corrupt forester has been brought before the law and the process of making government officials accountable is just not there,” he said. ”Loggers continue to operate with impunity throughout Cambodia protected by the very agencies charged with eliminating this illicit trade.”

Added Buckrell: ”In one instance we discovered an official register of illegal operators including details of their equipment and their home addresses, but rather than using this for enforcement purposes it is being used as the basis for extortion.”

Destruction of the forests in Cambodia directly threatens a large section of the rural population who depend on non-timber forest products for their livelihoods.

The secondary impacts are potentially equally severe.

The soil erosion that typically results from deforestation is already damaging Cambodia’s agricultural and fisheries sectors. Both of these are areas that the Cambodian government and donors have identified as pivotal to rural development.