Cambodian monk received UNDP award for forest protection

Ven. Bun Saluth, recipient of the Equator Initiative Prize 2010 for his forest protection work (Photo: Leang Delux, RFI)

07 Sept 2010
By Leang Delux
Radio France Internationale
Translated from Khmer by Soch
Click here to read the article in Khmer

Click here for additional information about the MCF and the Equator Initiative

Venerable Bun Saluth was selected by the UNDP to receive a prize for forest protection. He was one of the 25 people in the world who received the award from the UNDP. Ven. Bun Saluth is the administrator of the Monks Community Forestry (MCF) in Oddar Meanchey province. He will leave to New York to receive his award dubbed the Equator Initiative prize.

Ven. Bun Saluth will leave to New York, US, at the beginning of next week based on an invitation from the organizing committee of the Equator Initiative prize. Ven. Bun Saluth, who led the protection of forest and the conservation of wild animals since 2001, was selected by the UNDP to receive the Equator Prize 2010. The forest protection and wildlife conservation, which later renamed the Monks Community Forestry, occupy an area of 18,216-hectare extending from Samrong district to Anlong Veng district in Oddar Meanchey province.

39-year-old Ven. Bun Saluth indicated that he is very thrilled and happy for the international recognition of his community’s achievement. He said that this is also a pride for Cambodia on the international scene as well. He explained that forest communities are very important for the livelihood of the 3,500 families living in the community as they depend on the forest resources. Furthermore, forest communities will provide benefit to the country in the form of carbon bank also.

Long Ratanak Komar, the deputy director of the forestry department and forest communities of the forestry administration, indicated his happiness over the recognition awarded to Ven. Bun Saluth. He said that the prize will not only encourage local communities to continue their forest protection work, but it also encourages the government to plan and provide support to the various forest communities in Cambodia as well. He also indicated that the MCF administers the largest area among the 12 forest communities recognized by the government and that the government left these communities to the management of the local community leaders.

Current Science: More than 60% of Cambodia's rainforest has been logged

Estimated percentage of degraded and primary forest for selected Asian tropical nations, based on a recent analysis. Degraded forests include logged and secondary forests and plantations. Courtesy of Current Science.

Rainforest destruction continues in tropical Asia

December 9, 2007
Rhett A. Butler
mongabay.com

Tropical forests in Asia have been rapidly and extensively destroyed over the past generation, with significant implications for the region's biodiversity and global climate.

A new study, published in the December volume of Current Science, finds that Asian forest loss has occurred mostly in poor, corrupt countries that have high population density and robust population growth rates.

Analyzing forest cover data and economic and demographic figures, Dr. William Laurance of Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, shows that half of tropical Asian nations have already lost more than 70 percent of their forest cover, while the pace of deforestation across the region (0.8-0.9 percent per year) has been about twice as high as rates in Latin America and Africa (0.4-0.5 percent per year). Worryingly, Laurance says that clearing in forest-rich countries like Indonesia and Malaysia appears to be increasingly driven by large-scale commercial activities like industrial agriculture and logging rather than subsistence farming by small-holders, suggesting that the link between population density and forest exploitation may be diminishing in significance. The trend, fueled by economic globalization including surging Chinese demand for natural resources, is important because it indicates that urbanization — which some analysts believe will reduce pressure on forest areas, thereby allowing regeneration of forests on abandoned agricultural lands — may not be may not be a panacea for forest recovery.

"It is important to emphasize... that industrial drivers have clearly increased in importance in recent decades as a proximate cause of tropical forest conversion," writes Laurance. "In tropical Asia, among the most important of such industrial drivers are selective logging, largescale plantations of oil-palm and rubber trees and mineral exploitation. Such activities not only directly destroy or degrade forests, but they also provide a key economic impetus for road-building in forested areas. Such roads greatly increase physical accessibility to forests for colonists, hunters and swidden farmers."

"As industrialization and globalization further increase in tropical Asia, the strong relationship between local population density and forest cover may begin to weaken, because even sparsely populated countries can be intensively exploited in a globalized world," he continues.

Protected areas in tropical Asia

While protected areas could help slow the impact of industrial conversion of natural forests, Laurance says that conservation efforts in some tropical Asian countries have shown "mixed" results due to corruption and resource availability outside protected areas.

"Many protected areas are being isolated and degraded by illegal logging, hunting and other forms of encroachment," he writes. "Some reserves have already collapsed ecologically. Protected areas in Peninsular Malaysia and Java are relatively stable, but many in Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, the Philippines and Indonesian Borneo are seriously imperiled."

Laurance argues that improved law enforcement and programs to expand protected areas — like the "Heart of Borneo" initiative to conserve a large swathe of forest in central Borneo — could help limit biodiversity and forest loss in the region, but warns that action must come soon in order to be effective.

"Having spent years working in the Amazon and Central Africa, it's striking to see how serious the situation is in tropical Asia," Laurance told mongabay.com. "The fundamental drivers of forest destruction are remarkably intense, and the region contains the greatest concentration of biodiversity hotspots on earth. It's a tragedy in the making."

CITATION: William F. Laurance (2007). Forest destruction in tropical Asia. CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 93, NO. 11, 10 DECEMBER 2007