| PHNOM PENH — Citizens can be journalists, and they can help Cambodia face ongoing issues like illegal logging, rights abuses and corruption, a communications technology expert says. Ngeth Moses, ICT coordinator for the Community Legal Education Center, told “Hello VOA” Monday that new tools are making it easier for so-called citizen journalists to emerge. |
 A villager is seen here tying timber to his motorcycle for trading with the logging company as two UN investigator are looking around in the compound of the logging company, April 27, 2012. |
Forestry advocates see more youth engaging in environmental protection, especially in forest communities where illegal logging is rampant.
“Previously, only elder people from the ages of 30, 40 or 50 up stood up to protect their forests, but recently more younger people have been participating in the anti-illegal logging movement,” Chhim Savuth, a community empowerment officer of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, told “Hello VOA” on Monday. |
A fishing boat floats on the Mekong river at Sambor in Cambodia's Kratie Provice, a
site in the country that has been chosen for a proposed 18-kilometer hydro-dam.
Upstream, China has four hydrodams in operation on the Mekong and has plans for four more.
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Regional security experts warn that Mekong River countries must do a better job of sharing, as more and more look toward hydropower on the massive river.
Experts met in Siem Reap this weekend to discuss ways to mitigate impending conflict over the river, which is a major food source to millions of people but also a huge power supply to growing economies in the region. |
Experts on water security met in Siem Reap on Friday, July 15, 2011, at a two-day
conference of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific in an effort to
address upcoming issues surrounding such projects and other water conflict.
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The race for hydropower development among Mekong countries could lead to conflicts or even war over water, regional security experts say.
Hydroelectric projects have begun to spring up across the Mekong River, with some already under way and other already creating tensions between Southeast Asian neighbors. |
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The majority of Cambodians have little understanding of the causes of climate change, due to a lack of information, a new poll has found.
In a survey by the BBC World Service Trust of 2,401 Cambodians from all walks of life, about 85 percent said they had heard of climate change, although they associated it with disease, farming troubles and drought. |
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A documentary showing the possible impacts of hydropower dams on the Mekong was screened in Phnom Penh Tuesday night, a week after Mekong countries failed to decide on a dam proposed in Laos.
About 200 people, most of them students, watched the film, “Where Have All the Fish Gone?: Killing the Mekong Dam by Dam,” which was directed by journalist Tom Fawtrop and screened at Pannasastra University in the capital. |
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On a recent afternoon, a patrol of armed forest rangers came across three teenage boys in the forest of the Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary.
The rangers, who work for the government but are bolstered by a conservation group, jumped out at the boys and told them to stop. They had them lace their fingers behind their heads and sit on the grassy trail for questioning. |
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Grey-haired Soth Sophal prepared one recent day to lead a group of six villagers through the forest to a waterfall.
He would guide them in a way responsible to the environment, showing off the natural splendor of the area, near his home village of Prey Praseth, in Preah Sihanouk province’s Kampong Seila district. |
 | Chea Veoung, a 32-year-old farmer in Kampong Cham province, looked desperately at the bank of the Mekong River recently, noting that a severe drop in its level was costing him three times as much in fuel just to irrigate his fields. “When the level gets so low, [the pump] consumes about 20 liters” of fuel, he said. |
