Greung Bpel hacked at a wall of grass alongside the dirt road leading away from her village, and pointed toward where she had once farmed.
A member of an Indigenous ethnic Bunong community, the elderly Bpel lives in the village of Pu Kong deep inside the 292,690-hectare (723,250-acre) Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary, much of it part of a leading carbon offset initiative, in northeastern Cambodia’s Mondulkiri province.
Last year, Bpel said, after she went into debt and worked for months to prepare a plot for farming, rangers from Cambodia’s Ministry of Environment demanded around $60 in extortion because she was using land without permission inside a protected area.
