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| Residents of Soyong village, in Preah Vihear province, protest at Wat Botum in Phnom Penh last week. Photograph: Heng Chivoan/Phnom Penh Post |
Monday, 13 August 2012
Robert Finch and Steven Kramer
The Phnom Penh Post
But further reforms are required, namely:
1) Establishing a transparent mechanism for approving applications for economic land concessions that conducts full and proper social, economic and environmental surveys, in addition to a transparent online central register, accessible to the public, under which all existing concessions can be scrutinised;
2) Reviewing all existing economic land concessions and cancelling any that are illegal under the Land Law 2001;
3) Instigating a comprehensive and fair process of land titling to prevent further disputes and civil unrest. This would involve drawing up definitive boundaries of what constitutes state private land, state public land, private land, community land and protected land, and absolutely guaranteeing the protection of indigenous communities and their livelihoods, as well as all areas of endangered primary forest, biodiversity, conservation and wildlife;
4) Abandoning the controversial “leopard skin” strategy and amending the Land Law 2001 to prevent several subsidiary companies of the same company group circumventing the 10,000-hectare limit by taking adjacent concessions; and
5) Reforming the judiciary so all parties can have faith in the country’s ability to resolve disputes in a just and transparent manner.
The Royal Government of Cambodia has recently announced the cancellation of four economic land concessions (ELCs) – granted to Vietnamese rubber enterprises – that threatened to cause irreparable harm to the Prey Lang forest, the largest remaining primary evergreen forest on the Indochinese peninsula.
Given the inherent difficulties in striking a balance between Cambodia’s stated goals of increasing its economic growth and development, and promoting critically needed social stability and upward mobility among its people, the government certainly deserves applause for this decision.
That said, one big step does not a successful journey make.
The course the government set for itself with the passage of the 2001 Land Law, which included the authority to grant economic land concessions, was fraught with the potential for the ill-considered or corrupt granting of concessions and the conflicts that would inevitably result.
