Pressroom

New Vietnamese customs data for April shows timber continued to flow across Cambodia’s border to Vietnam despite Cambodian authorities announcing a ban on lumber exports to the country’s eastern neighbour more than a year ago.

Disarmed FARC fighters, now in demobilised zones, have been recruited to protect rainforests from farmers seeking grazing land and criminal gangs cutting down trees for illegal gold mining, writes Anastasia Moloney in Caqueta, Colombia.

More than a month after confirming its investigation into new reports of rampant timber trafficking between Cambodia and Vietnam, the Environment Ministry remains tight-lipped about what—if any—progress it is making, but says the U.K. NGO that exposed the scale of the problem is itself being scrutinized.

More than 1.5 billion cows graze this great earth, and each of them has four stomachs.

CAQUETA, Colombia, June 9 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Seen from the air, muddy rivers snake through rolling forested hills stretching to the horizon in Colombia’s southern province of Caqueta that for decades were rebel lairs and an epicentre of the civil war.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia – It was June 1999, and Cambodia’s then-Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Chhea Song, was addressing a regional symposium on forestry law enforcement in Phnom Penh.

CAQUETA, COLOMBIA —  Seen from the air, muddy rivers snake through rolling forested hills stretching to the horizon in Colombia’s southern province of Caqueta that for decades were rebel lairs and an epicenter of the civil war.

CAQUETA, Colombia (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Seen from the air, muddy rivers snake through rolling forested hills stretching to the horizon in Colombia’s southern province of Caqueta that for decades were rebel lairs and an epicentre of the civil war.

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam – After several weeks of silence, the Vietnamese government announced that it is working to begin an investigation into allegations of widespread illegal logging in Cambodia directed by Vietnamese companies and provincial government officials.

Spurred by a booming economy and high demand from China, authorities across northern Laos encouraged smallholder rubber planting in the mid-2000s. This was welcomed by many as a farmer-friendly alternative to the large-scale land concessions dominant in the south, one that could boost local livelihoods while solidifying de facto land claims. What began as an […]