In the Interest of the Climate? Forest Conservation in Cambodia Poses a Further Threat to Indigineous Peoples

On a sunny and hot day in March, in the heart of Cambodia’s dry season, Dam Tein’s way of life suddenly changed. Without prior warning, the 54-year-old farmer was prevented from accessing the farmland he had used for over 15 years. “Rangers from the Ministry of Environment came to push me and another 30 families away from our land, claiming it belonged to the State,” said the resident of Srae Andoal village, in the eastern province of Mondulkiri. “Since then, we feel hopeless and struggle to make ends meet. Some people still go farm there as they have no other option to make a living … But they go with fear and flee as soon as they hear rangers approaching. Several farmers have seen their motorbikes or farming materials confiscated by rangers.”

The land that Dam Tein refers to is located in the center of the Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary, a 290,000-hectare protected area that is home to Cambodia’s second carbon-offsetting project, established in 2010. The area is composed of a mix of biodiversity-rich forests and farmlands used by local communities, who had lived there before the protected area was established.

But as Cambodia has set a net-zero emission goal by 2050 and plans to make the conservation of forests a paramount aspect of it, residents fear  their farmlands and traditional farming techniques could disappear in the name of forest conservation.

The village of Srae Andoal is indeed located in a REDD+ project, a UN-backed carbon offsetting scheme that aims to prevent forests from being cut down to preserve the carbon sinks they represent. The framework – whose acronym stands for “reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries” – allows companies and individuals around the world to offset their carbon emissions by paying to preserve primary forests in places like Keo Seima. The money generated from the sale of carbon credits goes to local authorities, conservation NGOs in charge of implementing the project, and eventually – though usually in small amounts – to local communities.

While on paper such a scheme could be seen as an efficient way to compensate for carbon emissions, a recent cross-media investigation showed that its impacts have been largely overestimated. And in the context of Cambodia, where tragic history and complex regulations on land and protected areas combine, experts fear that REDD+ projects might lead to a new form of land grabbing affecting indigenous communities.

Multiple overlaps over multiple land uses

Like almost everyone in his village, Dam Tein identifies himself as Bunong, one of Cambodia’s 20 ethnic groups who speak their own language and preserve animist beliefs. Over the centuries, Bunong people have developed a special relationship with the forest, relying on its non-timber products like mushrooms, flowers or resin to make a living. “We feel like we are the guardians of the forest,” said the farmer.

They also practice rotational farming to grow rice, vegetables or fruits. The technique, which is used by most of the ethnic groups in the country, consists of farming a plot of land for a few years before moving to another farmland to allow the earth to regenerate.

But this traditional farming method, which requires many different farmlands in different locations, is now threatened by the increasing size of the protected areas and REDD+ projects, as they often overlap with what Bunong people consider to be their traditional land. “Since we have been chased away from our land in early 2024, we are mapping it with the support of local authorities and a local NGO,” said Yaen Song, a resident of Chak Char, a village located around 10 km away from Srae Andoal. Like Dam Tein, he has recently been barred from using his farmland. “But it’s too soon to tell if we’ll be able to keep it or not,” he lamented.

At the core of his concerns lies the complex relationship of Cambodia with land ownership. The issue goes back to 1975, when the Khmer Rouge took power and abolished all forms of private property. Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot and his Maoist comrades collectivized agriculture, massively relocated people to work in labor camps and destroyed pre-existing title deeds.

Four years later, when the regime –responsible for the death of over 1.5 million people – collapsed, millions of people flocked back to where they used to live and resettled wherever they could, without property deeds. This is particularly true for indigenous people, who understand land ownership in the context of the community and have never had any ownership records.

In an effort to regulate the situation, the government passed a land law in 2001, which stipulated that “any person who, for no less than five years prior to the promulgation of the Law, enjoyed peaceful, uncontested possession of immovable property that can lawfully be privately possessed, has the right to request a definitive title of ownership”.

The law also established a scheme to grant Indigenous Communal Land Titles (ICLTs) to indigenous people, in a move to recognize their specific and collective land tenure. Their rights to land recognition were strengthened in 2007 when Cambodia adopted the U.N.’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which granted indigenous groups authority over the land they have held “by reason of traditional ownership,” to use or develop as they see fit.

Yet, two decades on, the vast majority of indigenous communities still lack proper registration of their land: Only 32 of over 450 indigenous communities have so far received a communal land title across the country, with an additional 86 being in the process.

De facto “impossibility” to register communal land in protected areas

One of the reasons for such a low number of communal land titles is that the process is particularly costly, time-consuming, and requires the coordination of multiple ministries and local entities.

But for indigenous communities seeking to assert their rights to land in a protected area, like those living in the Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary, the problem is directly connected to the role the Environment Ministry plays in the granting process.

The ministry has the ability to block any application that overlaps with a protected zone, be it a national park, a wildlife sanctuary or a REDD+ project. And since it became, in 2017, the sole institution overseeing the 7.4 million hectares of protected areas – accounting for 41% percent of Cambodia’s territory – it reportedly used its de facto veto to prevent the spread of communal land titles in the country.

“There is currently no process allowing communities to object to the instructions from the Ministry of Environment,” pointed out a 2020 report from the Cambodian Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, stressing the current “impossibility to register communal land in Protected Areas.”

“The Ministry of Environment simply doesn’t want to lose control over its protected areas,” said the agro-economist Jean Christophe Diepart. “It sees communal land titles as a state within the state, which could undermine its authority over those lands.”

The Environment Ministry did not respond to questions put to it for this report.

For Mane Yun, the Executive Director of the Cambodia Indigenous Peoples Organization (CIPO), “the government only focuses on nature’s rights and not on indigenous rights,” by blocking the granting of title of several community lands. “They are a good way to preserve indigenous people’s land and traditions, but the process should be simplified and allow greater involvement by the local communities,” she said.

Deforestation Continues

This top-down approach, in which local communities are not seen as trustful partners, and the lack of clarity regarding the boundaries of protected areas and REDD+ projects have been studied by the anthropologist Frederic Bourdier.

In a research paper published in January 2024 about the repercussions of REDD+ projects on indigenous people in Cambodia, he noted that “villagers, especially Indigenous Peoples, experience a two-tiered regime. They are prohibited from cutting down even a tree for basic needs, while they are aware that [well…] connected investors and private bodies engage in vast deforestation ventures with impunity.”

In the context of Cambodia, where corruption is rampant and timber is seen as a valuable asset, the increase in the size of protected areas has failed to prevent large-scale deforestation. Bourdier’s study highlighted that “around 1.5 million acres [607,028 hectares], or 12% of the Kingdom's protected areas forest cover was lost between 2011 and 2018.”

The country’s four REDD+ projects show similar patterns. According to data from Global Forest Watch, the total area of primary rainforest in Keo Seima REDD+ decreased by 32% since the project was established in 2010, and deforestation more than doubled between 2022 and 2023 in the Southern Cardamom REDD+ project. The forest cover in Tumring, Cambodia’s third REDD+ project, is down by 66% compared to 2011, with continuous deforestation being reported since the project was initiated in 2014. In Oddar Meanchey, the first REDD+ project established in Cambodia in 2008, forest cover decreased by 35% since 2000.

The NGOs in charge of implementing the REDD+ projects did not respond to interview requests.

Will history repeat itself?

Since it started to sell carbon credits, the Cambodian government received an estimated $11.6 million from REDD+. But this relatively small amount might be about to grow as at least seven new projects are either in the development or validation stage, not without raising concerns about their impact on community rights.

“REDD+ projects will be the new frontier of land conflict in Cambodia,” predicts agro-economist Diepart. “Just like fifteen years ago, indigenous communities will be between a rock and a hard place, at the mercy of the government's decisions, which has historically excluded them from its development strategy.”

From the mid-2000s to 2012, indigenous people already suffered massive evictions and land grabs as the government was granting Economic Land Concessions (ELCs) to national and foreign companies in a move to boost the agro-industry across the country. At their peak, such concessions covered more than two million hectares, or 12% of Cambodia’s national territory, until the government in 2012 decided freeze the granting of new ELCs.

This first wave of land conflicts affected the livelihood of 830,000 people, the international organization Global Diligence estimated in 2015. And as the concessions were mostly granted in remote areas, they primarily impacted indigenous people, who continue to suffer from the socio-economic consequences.

“The race for land has been going on for years, with the idea that those who control the land have the power,” explained Eang Vuthy, director of the NGO Equitable Cambodia, which fights for the rights of farmers. “The international treaties [signed by Cambodia] are supposed to act as safeguards and prevent systematic land grabbing, but there is a lack of political will to apply them.”

Mane Yun, from CIPO, wants to be more optimistic, arguing that there is still time to turn around the trend in REDD+ areas. But not without conditions. “If the authorities in charge of REDD+ projects respect the UN Declaration of Indigenous People’s Rights, and consider indigenous people as equal partners, I think we still have a chance to address these land issues. But if they don’t, I’m afraid that our rights, and especially the traditional occupation of the land, will suffer.”

In Keo Seima, people acknowledge the beneficial impact of the funds received as part of the REDD+ project. In 2023, Srae Andoal village earned $30,000 from the carbon credits sold over its area, “more than in the previous years, when we mostly received between $10,000 and $20,000,” Dam Tein noted.

But while the farmer says he is happy with “the development brought by the dirt roads, the water wells and the solar-powered street lights we could install in the village with these funds,” he remains unsure about the future of his community.

“It is all about finding the right balance between REDD+ and our traditional way of life,” he said. “What we need most is to preserve our land, as we rely on it for our livelihood. If REDD+ expands to the level where we can no longer grow crops, what is the point?”