Cambodia's gold, mineral find

May 24, 2010
AFP

London-based Global Witness has alleged that Cambodian earnings from natural resources, including minerals, are being 'jeopardised by high-level corruption, nepotism and patronage.' The environmental watchdog said Cambodia had enough natural wealth to wean itself off foreign aid but that international donors must do more to ensure the assets are properly managed.

PHNOM PENH - CAMBODIA said on Monday that Australian firm OZ Minerals had discovered around 8.1 million tonnes of gold on its territory, ahead of a conference intended to draw in mining investment.

Some 60 local and foreign firms including companies from Australia, China, South Korea and Vietnam have been conducting mineral research and exploration across Cambodia, an official said ahead of the international mining conference starting in Phnom Penh on Wednesday.

'We have been conducting research and we have obtained remarkable results,' said Sok Leng, head of the General Department of Mineral Resources at Cambodia's Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy, at a news conference.

OZ Minerals Limited had recently discovered about 8.1 million tonnes of gold in an area in the north-eastern province of Mondulkiri, said Mr Sok Leng. Other minerals including gold, iron ore, and copper had been found elsewhere in the country, he said.

Douglas Broderick, representative of the United Nations Development Programme, which is co-organising the conference with the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy, said Cambodia's mining sector would continue to develop. 'Obviously, we would like to see (the) mining conference encourage investment,' Mr Broderick said during the briefing.

London-based Global Witness has alleged that Cambodian earnings from natural resources, including minerals, are being 'jeopardised by high-level corruption, nepotism and patronage.' The environmental watchdog said Cambodia had enough natural wealth to wean itself off foreign aid but that international donors must do more to ensure the assets are properly managed.

In Resource Management, Media Can Play a Role

By Im Sothearith, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
30 November 2009

“Local media rarely broadcast about natural resource management. They broadcast mostly about improvement or development. But they have some short radio and TV spots to educate us not to kill wildlife and promote the government’s tree planting day, but other sensitive issues have never been broadcast.” Sarom, Phnom Penh resident

[Editor’s note: VOA Khmer recently spoke with specialists in the field of natural resource management in developing countries and learned that Cambodia is not alone in struggling to use natural resources to benefit its citizens. The resource curse, where natural riches fail to help the poor, is a worldwide scourge, the global experts told VOA Khmer in numerous interviews. Below is Part 13 of the original VOA Khmer weekly series, airing Sundays in Cambodia.]

Media outlets can play a critical role in natural resource management, but that has not been the case so far in Cambodia, where experts say exploitation of the country’s timber, minerals and other resources is often undertaken by political elites or businesses heavily involved in politics.

In order to build an informed society, according to Paul Collier, an Oxford University economist and author of “the Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It,” good media are needed, to inform citizens on issues of public interest.

Collier refers to these informed citizens as an important “critical mass,” which can help hold a government accountable on issues like natural resource management. However, he said, it is hard to build critical mass where good media are not in place.

“It doesn’t require everybody in the society to be well informed,” he said. “We need what’s called a critical mass, which is several thousand people who understand the issue and hold government to account.”

In the case of Cambodia, the local media have not been capable of informing people about the natural resource issue, said Chea Vannath, and independent analyst and former director of the Center for Social Development.

“Local media rarely broadcast about natural resource management,” one Phnom Penh resident, who gave only his given name, Sarom, said. “They broadcast mostly about improvement or development. But they have some short radio and TV spots to educate us not to kill wildlife and promote the government’s tree planting day, but other sensitive issues have never been broadcast.”

Puy Kea, Kyodo news correspondent and member of the Club of Cambodian Journalists, acknowledged that local media have limited coverage on the natural resource issue, while international media do better on sensitive issues.

Natural resources are not a priority for local media, he said. And there is a safety issue, as well.

“The real concern is when [journalists] go out to report on regions or institutions involving sensitive issues, such as corruption or irregularities,” he said. Meanwhile, he said, “in Cambodia nowadays, media have the tendency of leaning to the government and ruling party.”

Lao Monghay, a researcher for the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission, said Cambodia has a number of media outlets; however, “people are scared.”

“We must have information to make judgments, and we must have freedom of expression too,” he said. “It’s also the responsibility of the media, newspapers and radio to report and publish or broadcast to the people.”

Eleanor Nichol, a campaigner for the watchdog Global Witness, which has had two of its reports on natural resources banned in Cambodia, said full freedom to cover the issue would bring an element of transparency to the process.

“If they allow the publication of information about who has access to what resources so that people on the ground and civil society in Cambodia are able to see what and who has control of their resources, [they can] begin to call the government to account on that,” Nichol said.

Public Has Little Say in Resource Management

By Im Sothearith, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
24 November 2009

[Editor’s note: VOA Khmer recently spoke with specialists in the field of natural resource management in developing countries and learned that Cambodia is not alone in struggling to use natural resources to benefit its citizens. The resource curse, where natural riches fail to help the poor, is a worldwide scourge, the global experts told VOA Khmer in numerous interviews. Below is Part 11 of the original VOA Khmer weekly series, airing Sundays in Cambodia.]

Cambodian citizens are rarely given a chance to be meaningfully involved in managing the country’s natural resources, even though they own them in principal, and they are unlikely to have a chance to do so in the near future, experts say.

The government’s working culture and the existing mechanisms for resource management are impediments to participation by citizens, who nevertheless find themselves wooed during elections.

“The government should listen to citizens’ opinions about the management of natural resources in Cambodia and other challenges, such as the degradation of the environment,” said Lao Monghay, a researcher at the Asian Rights Commission in Hong Kong. “The government must take these under consideration, respond and take effective measures.”

Paul Collier, an Oxford University economist and author of “The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It,” told VOA Khmer by phone that public input is important, but the public must be informed.

“The government won’t get it right unless the critical mass of citizens understands the issue,” Collier said. “The citizens have to get up and speak, especially [because] managing natural resources involves the future. These resources are going to run out. So extracting these resources needs to lead to a legacy of good investment for the future.”

Chea Vannath, an independent analyst and founder of the Center for Social Development, told VOA Khmer by phone that Cambodians’ knowledge about natural resources is limited, allowing policymakers to ignore them.

“Even though they see natural resource transactions, they do not know whether they are legal or illegal,” she said. “They don’t know whether they should stage a demonstration. They are not clear. If they raise their concerns about what impacts their lives, the concerns are usually stuck at local authority levels. There is no mechanism to pass the concerns from local authorities to provincial authorities to ministerial levels in the capital. There is no bridge to pass on such concerns.”

Despite such criticism, National Assembly Vice President Nguon Nhel told VOA Khmer by phone that the government encourages the public’s role in resource management.

“Now the government encourages people to form communities so that they can be owners of nature,” Nguon Nhel said. “We have forest protection communities, fish protection communities. So, they fish in their fishing areas and protect them at the same time. work with local authorities to arrest abusers. So creating communities is beneficial, so that people are able to exercise their rights of ownership.”

Sarom, a truck driver in Phnom Penh who asked he not be fully identified, told VOA Khmer by phone that he understands ordinary citizens have responsibilities, but political pressure and starvation hamper them from thinking about anything else.

“It happens only in developed countries,” Sarom said. “The development in our country is very little. About 30 to 40 percent of Cambodian people are poor. They are not simply poor, but the poorest, with nothing to eat daily. Therefore, how can people have a chance to think about natural resource management? When they are starving, they don’t have a brain to think about anything else.”

According to New Zealand’s International Aid and Development Agency, while 40 percent of the Cambodian population has expenditure levels well below the poverty line, with 15 to 20 percent in extreme poverty. And while their livelihoods depend heavily on natural resources, the country’s natural resources have been dramatically degraded.

Saroeun, a 45 year-old resident of Kampong Speu province, told VOA Khmer by phone that he knows that, as a citizen in a democratic country, he has a responsibility to safeguard natural resources, but can’t do anything.

He sees mountains near his home destroyed and carried off as rocks in trucks.

“First we lost natural resources that existed over generations,” Saroeun said. “When they destroy them, we lose them and their beauty. Transporting those [rocks] destroys the road. In the past, I didn’t know what they used the rock for, but since I was born I used to see more mountains than now.”

More Capacity Needed for Resource Management

By Im Sothearith, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
20 October 2009

Laws, regulations, and capacity building comprise important steps in natural resource development, which can fill government coffers, Cambodia’s ambassador to the US said at a recent discussion in Washington.

“The revenue from both the petroleum and mining sectors will contribute substantially to the nation’s development of infrastructure, to form the basis for the future economic growth,” Ambassador Hem Heng said at the Oct. 15 discussion, organized by Oxfam America.

The International Monetary Fund estimated in 2007 that revenue from Cambodia’s untapped oil reserves could reach $174 million in 2011, climbing to $1.7 billion by 2021.

Since then, Cambodian oil has attracted major international corporations, spurring concerns from local and international organizations and donor countries that the government’s management capabilities may not be adequate.

Critics point to a record of poor management in other resources, such as timber.

Oxfam America is working with Cambodian government on natural resource management.

Lim Solin, the group’s East Asia program officer, said Oxfam America wants to see the government use resource revenue with transparency and accountability, and for future investment.

The strategy is to work with the government, civil society, the private sector and donors.

“We all have common goal to develop natural resources successfully so that average Cambodian people benefit from the developemnt” Lim Solin said.

Michael Zwirn, director of US operations for Wildlife Alliance, which has project in Cambodia’s Cardamom Mountains, said discussion of resource management can help improve the government’s opportunities when oil and gas begin to flow.

Government officials have proven very cooperative with Wildlife Alliance, he said, but some still lack political will and dedication to develop natural resources.

“There’re some individual members of the Cambodian government who are tremendously supportive,” he said. “The other members have not yet been convinced, but we’re helping to develop political will within the Cambodian government at a very high level, as well as the rural government in the provinces.”

Laos must manage resources wisely to escape poverty, says WBank

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

A vendor rides on a bicycle with handphone-shaped balloons for sale along a street in Vientiane. Communist Laos, one of Asia's poorest countries, can achieve its goal of becoming a middle-income economy by 2020 if it pushes reforms and manages its natural resources wisely, according to the World Bank. (Photo: AFP)

AFP

Communist Laos, one of Asia's poorest countries, can achieve its goal of becoming a middle-income economy by 2020 if it pushes reforms and manages its natural resources wisely, according to the World Bank.

Laos needs to promote "quality investments" in hydro-power, mining and industrial plantations and make sure the returns are used to benefit its people, said the World Bank's East Asia-Pacific vice president Jim Adams.

"The 2020 vision is achievable if Lao PDR (People's Democratic Republic) sustains and builds on its reforms," said Adams, referring to the country's goal of escaping Least Developed Country status by 2020.

Laos has fewer than six million people, about 80 per cent of whom work in agriculture. International development aid, mining, logging and tourism have made up the bulk of the 2.5-billion-dollar a year economy.

Speaking after a four-day visit, Adams congratulated Laos on progress in fighting poverty and boosting economic growth to over seven percent last year, the bank said in a statement.

But he cautioned that, in order for Laos to become a middle-income country with annual per capita GDP of 1,000 dollars, "it will be crucial for resources to be administered wisely and effectively and to boost the pace of reforms."

"Significant policy and implementation challenges" remain, he said.

Laos -- a landlocked country between China, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia -- needs to further improve governance, the management of natural resources and public finances, and to boost the private sector, he said.

With little industry, the Lao government's single biggest economic hope has been a World Bank-backed hydro-electric project, the Nam Theun II dam, which is expected to feed power to Thailand from 2009.

Adams, who visited the Nam Theun II site, expressed satisfaction on the project's implementation and emphasized that social and environmental safeguard measures need to keep pace with construction, said the bank.

"The transparent and sound management of natural resources and their use to improve social outcomes and protect environmental quality will be essential as government considers several new hydro and mining opportunities after the approval of the Nam Theun II project," said Adams.

"Developing the country in a socially and environmentally sustainable way and ensuring that revenues are used to benefit the people of Lao PDR will be key to ensuring that future generations will also be able to benefit from the country's natural resources."