The Forestry Administration’s new independent forestry monitor, Societe Generale de Surveillance, released its first public report Tuesday evening, covering two and one-half months evaluating the government’s reporting and investigation of forest crime.
SGS audited and reviewed reports recorded in the Forestry Administration’s Case Tracking System, a computerized database of forest crimes. In this first public report, SGS checked that reported crimes were entered into the database and were investigated.
According to the report, SGS investigators took part in several field investigations, including a reported sawmill operating illegally in Phnom Penh’s Russei Keo district. Another major case in the report addressed illegal logging and land clearing at the Tumring rubber plantation in Kompong Thom province. “The staff had confiscated 44 oxcarts and timber…the SGS inspected this confiscation,” SGS reported, adding it had yet to determine the legality of the Tumring operation.
Concerning the Russei Keo sawmill, SGS found the sawmill had ceased operating, and the report concluded that “any illegal sawmilling had been suppressed” by the Forestry Administration.
Two pages later, however, the report states that the Forestry Administration’s forest crime monitoring unit had “no record of any operation being carried out to suppress the illegal sawmill.”
SGS also said the problem of forest crime is “in most cases being carried out by people in desperate need for income and/or land on which to live.”
The report did not address reports in February by independent watchdog Global Witness alleging that high-ranking forestry officials issued permits that were used to log and transport timber in Kratie, Oddar Meanchey and Preah Vihear provinces.
Also not addressed was a March incident where members of a convoy traveling with Phnom Penh Governor Kep Chuktema allegedly shot at local forestry and provincial officials when they tried to inspect a convoy truck suspected of hauling illegal timber.
SGS Project Manager Robert Tennent could not be reached for comment Wednesday. SGS general manager Bruce Telfer declined to comment when contacted by phone in Papua New Guinea, where he is based.
Tennent said in early April that the March event would not appear until the August report because the Forestry Administration did not have sufficient time to investigate the incident.
The projected five-month delay in evaluating the March incident highlights concerns raised by several NGO representatives at the SGS launch in February that high-profile cases would not be promptly addressed publicly.
Mike Davis of Global Witness said the report bears out fears that the SGS project’s contractual requirements have hamstrung its capability to thoroughly investigate forest crimes. “Their actual verification is not a verification of Forestry Administration’s performance,” Davis said. “It’s a verification of what the foresters write down.”
Global Witness was the only organization contacted Wednesday whose representatives said they had read the 19-page report.
Donors involved in forestry, including the World Bank, Britain’s Department for International Development, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Danish International Development Agency, had not read the report or declined comment Wednesday.
In a letter posted on his Web site Wednesday, King Norodom Sihanouk lamented the continued destruction of the nation’s forests.
“Thanks to Global Witness, we know that our New Regime Cambodia, ‘New Fatherland of Ang-kor’ makes its way irresistibly
near its total and irreversible DEFORESTATION,” the King wrote.
The SGS report coincides with a visit from a representative of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee to look into the controversy over the dismissal of former independent monitor, Global Witness, in conjunction with Committee hearings into possible corruption in the World Bank’s and other international lenders’ programs.
