Mongabay features writer Gerry Flynn joins Mongabay’s podcast to discuss a new investigation he published with freelance journalist Nehru Pry looking at how mining company Lin Vatey acquired thousands of hectares of a public forest, essentially kicking local people, including the Kuy Indigenous community, off public lands that they previously relied on.
In this conversation, Flynn details how a once thriving community managed the Phnom Chum Rok Sat community forest and a robust ecotourism venture, which shut down when most of their land was given to 10 people with close ties to the government.
“Ten individuals seemingly just reached out to the [Cambodian] government to ask if they could just have 3,064 hectares of land … much of which is in the community forest. Which is a pretty bizarre request, most normal people can’t just ask the government [for] that much land,” Flynn says.
