timber, politics and development

chainsaw

The Khmer Rouge timber trade, the seriously flawed concession system and military controlled illegal logging had combined to pose a fatal threat to the future of Cambodia's forests, unless urgent action was taken. Global Witness lobbied the international donor community, which was meeting in Tokyo in May 1996. Prior to the meeting Global Witness met with the embassies of donor nations in Bangkok and Phnom Penh, and the foreign and development ministries and departments in Bonn, Brussels, Canberra, The Hague, London, Paris, Tokyo and Washington, together with officials in the headquarters of the EU, the IMF and the World Bank. These visits were broadly successful. A problem had been that many of the donors simply had not recognised the importance of the forestry issue, and that the implications of deforestation and illegal logging were not just serious for Cambodia, but had a direct impact on their own aid programmes. Seventeen out of twenty-one delegations raised forestry as a major issue at the donors' meeting. Global Witness had called for 'positive conditionality' on non-humanitarian aid; in effect the awarding of aid on a performance related basis, rather than the cutting off of aid. The donors would not take this step but they did demand that the Cambodian government make certain commitments.

Between November 1997 and February 1998 four independent consultancies, funded by the World Bank, undertook the individual technical assistance projects. Their reports in May 1998 confirmed everybody's worst fears. Concession management was abysmal, corruption endemic and logging out of control. They estimated that 4.7 million m3 of timber had been felled in 1997/8, of which 95% was illegal. Most disturbing of all, they stated that Cambodia's forests would be commercially logged out by 2003. These reports, which were supported by Global Witness' independent findings, laid the template for forestry reform.