History repeats as logging linked to Cambodian hydropower dam in Cardamoms

This is the first of a two-part Mongabay series about hydropower dams in the Cardamom Mountains. Read Part Two.

PURSAT/KOH KONG, Cambodia — Rumbling south down a rutted dirt track in the western Cambodian province of Pursat, past prone excavators and makeshift worker encampments, the green slopes of the Cardamom Mountains loomed suddenly from around the bend.

In early April, days before Khmer New Year, Cambodia’s most celebrated holiday, the access road on which we traveled was all but abandoned, and checkpoints into the Stung Meteuk hydropower dam remained unmanned. Hugging the Thai border, the road runs a bumpy, hilly and desolate 65 kilometers (40 miles) from Pursat province’s Thma Da commune down to Pak Khlang commune in Koh Kong province, with few signs of life along the way.

Here, in this remote stretch of mountainous rainforest, history appears to be repeating itself as Mongabay has uncovered illegal loggers operating under the cover of hydropower construction.

There are no residents living near the construction site, which is sandwiched between the unnamed border road to the west and the dense forests of the 362,000-hectare (895,000-acre) Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary to the east.

To the south of the dam, an outpost of bored Cambodian soldiers from Battalion 303 are stationed along the border road, while to the north sits the M.D.S. Thma Da Special Economic Zone (SEZ), which has repeatedly been tied to human trafficking.

If a tree is taken in these woods, there’s nobody around to see it.

Between the soldiers and the SEZ sits the site of the 150-megawatt Stung Meteuk hydropower project, which consists of three cascading dams running nearly 23 km (14 mi) from its northernmost tip in Pursat to its southernmost point in Koh Kong.

A Mongabay analysis, based on published maps of the project, estimates the three planned reservoirs, from north to south, span 1,868, 287 and 247 hectares (4,616, 709 and 610 acres), but the access roads and other supporting infrastructure detailed in these maps suggest that almost 3,000 hectares (7,400 acres) of forest will be affected in total.

When we visited in April, paths from inside the dam’s northernmost reservoir were seen extending into the protected forests of Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary. These sprawling, crudely cut paths aren’t featured in any plans for the Stung Meteuk dam and lead directly over mountain ridges into intact sections of forest, suggesting they were built for timber extraction.

Satellite imagery analysis confirmed that, between November 2023 and June 2024, at least 20 individual routes spanning a combined 30 km (19 mi) were built from inside the designated reservoir boundaries, extending out into the sanctuary’s forests. The reservoirs themselves are within a shrubby valley, offering minimal supplies of valuable timber, but these routes have been carved out over the rolling slopes and into pristine forest.

At least three of these routes track back into the northernmost reservoir, where we identified stacks of logs lined up in what appears to be a timber depot.

The hammer falls on Cambodian rainforest

The Stung Meteuk dams were officially approved by the Cambodian government in July 2023 and construction of the $440 million project appeared to begin around October 2023, at the tail end of the rainy season.

Leaked documents that don’t appear to have been made public detail auctions of timber cleared from the reservoir of the Stung Meteuk hydropower dam.

Dated Dec. 14, 2023, and signed by Koh Kong Governor Mithona Puthong, the documents show that a timber auction committee was formed within the Koh Kong provincial administration to facilitate the sale of timber cleared by the aptly named Steung Meteuk Hydropower Co. Ltd.

These documents were verified by Prak Bunny, chief of the Cambodia Forestry Administration’s cantonment in Koh Kong, the government agency typically responsible for overseeing the sale of timber.

“This [auction] is managed by the environment ministry,” Bunny said. “The Stung Meteuk company is collecting [timber] and directly finding buyers [for timber from] the reservoirs. The company is in charge of everything.”

The sale of timber in Cambodia is supposed to be managed by the Forestry Administration, which would then be responsible for finding buyers, setting prices, and collecting taxes or royalties on the sale. In practice, though, this rarely happens, and timber auctions remain dangerously opaque, especially given that they only usually take place when large volumes of timber are on sale.

In a June phone interview with Mongabay, Bunny said the initial timber auctions had already been completed and that he didn’t know whether there would be more. The company, he added, had paid taxes on the sale of the timber to the National Bank of Cambodia. When asked how much was paid in taxes, Bunny said he was in a meeting and promptly hung up the phone.

Hun Marady, director of the Koh Kong provincial department of environment, and Governor Puthong both repeatedly declined to comment. Steung Meteuk Hydropower Co. Ltd. didn’t answer phone calls or emails sent by Mongabay.

The dam is so remote that there are few communities nearby; and its position between the Thma Da SEZ and the military outpost mean few will witness the felling of forests linked to the project, making it all the easier for timber laundering to take place.

Historically, timber auctions in Cambodia have been secretive affairs and often involve the sale of seized timber. Few auctions are publicly announced, but the buyers, sales and revenues generated by the state have increasingly become even more opaque. In 2014, the government’s timber auction committee was headed by Eang Sophalleth, an assistant to then-prime minister Hun Sen.

A decade later, Sophalleth now serves as Cambodia’s environment minister, and recently told pro-government media during a reforestation campaign in Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary that there would be “100 percent law enforcement without exception” in relation to natural resource crimes.

Sophalleth didn’t respond to questions regarding his role in timber auctions or whether the dam developer was above the law.

A very Cambodian timber grab

At the time we visited the dam, hundreds of gendarmerie officers (the Cambodian equivalent of the military police) and Ministry of Environment rangers had descended on Pursat province to crack down on natural resources crimes. But their monthlong efforts saw only 16 small-scale farmers charged with clearing forest in relation to subsistence agriculture.

For its part, Steung Meteuk Hydropower Co. Ltd. is chaired by Ly Yong Phat, a notorious tycoon and himself a sitting senator for the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, whose long list of environmental crimes have gone unpunished.

Hydropower is just one revenue stream in Ly Yong Phat’s portfolio; his wealth has come from real estate, private electricity utility, air travel ventures, sand dredging, concrete, sugar, rubber, tobacco, TV stations, casinos and satellite cities. His deep-sea port in Koh Kong is under construction, while rumors of his lease on Koh Kong Krao, Cambodia’s largest island, stubbornly persist.

Wielding considerable influence — buoyed by his Thai-Cambodian dual citizenship — and connections to top political and military figures, Ly Yong Phat has survived allegations that would have destroyed a less-connected businessman.

His widely protested sand dredging operations have been repeatedly accused of violating a ban on exporting sand, while his now largely defunct sugar plantations resulted in some of the most violent forced evictions documented in Cambodia. More recently, reports of properties belonging to the tycoon being used by human traffickers were deemed credible enough that an antitrafficking conference was rescheduled after it came to light that Ly Yong Phat owned the venue it was due to be held in. Now, he passes the torch to his son, Ly Phoonrat, whose rubber business was awarded one of the last forested patches in Botum Sakor National Park, where the tycoon has been known to engage in the illicit timber trade.

The construction of the Stung Meteuk dam is already having a significant impact on the habitats within Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary, a protected forest more than five times the size of Phnom Penh that has historically been home to the critically endangered Siamese crocodile (Crocodylus siamensis) endangered green peafowl (Pavo muticus), the vulnerable clouded leopard (Neofelis nebulosa), Malayan sun bear (Helarctos malayanus) and even a small population of Asian elephants (Elephas maximus), as well as numerous bird, amphibian and reptile species. However, much of the research on the biodiversity of Phnom Samkos was conducted more than a decade ago and much has changed in the wildlife sanctuary since.

The forests and mountains that house these rare species are being eviscerated at an alarming rate, with 2023 seeing some 6,200 hectares (15,300 acres) of forest lost, making it the second-worst year on record for deforestation in Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary. Although the sanctuary was expanded by some 28,000 hectares (69,200 acres) in 2023, more than 96,000 deforestation alerts have been registered by Global Forest Watch in the first five months of 2024 alone.

While the Stung Meteuk project has resulted in new logging routes that track a path into virgin forest to the east of the reservoirs, previous deforestation within Phnom Samkos has been localized to two areas controlled by Try Pheap, a tycoon whose record of logging protected trees landed him on the U.S. government’s sanctions list in 2019.

Pheap owns the M.D.S. Thma Da SEZ, the borders of which extend to just 160 meters (525 feet) from the northern tip of the Stung Meteuk’s reservoir. All vehicles entering the dam from the north need to travel through the SEZ.

As recently as 2021, the M.D.S. Thma Da SEZ was found to play a key role in Pheap’s timber-smuggling business and was previously given licenses to export as much as 100,000 cubic meters (3.5 million cubic feet) of timber that Pheap had bought up from forests across the country — much of it believed to be illegally felled.

Dams across the Cardamoms have repeatedly seen timber traffickers like Try Pheap take advantage of the need to fell large volumes of forest to create a reservoir basin, often logging excessively beyond the boundaries of the reservoir and then laundering the logs as timber felled legally within the reservoir. It was while investigating illegal logging linked to hydropower dam development in the Cardamoms that Chut Wutty, then Cambodia’s most prominent environmental defender, was shot and killed in 2012.

Early days for the Stung Meteuk

In July 2022, representatives of Ly Yong Phat’s company met with representatives of the Koh Kong provincial administration to discuss the impacts of the Stung Meteuk hydropower project, but no findings from an environmental impact assessment have been made public. A feasibility study, which should detail the social and ecological consequences of the project, was also presented to the Ministry of Mines and Energy in May 2023, with Ly Yong Phat in attendance. The study’s results have also not been publicly disclosed.

In September 2023, two Chinese companies were brought on board as contractors: Huafei Anhe Group and Sinohydro Bureau 10, a subsidiary of Power Construction Corporation of China (PowerChina), with both Ly Yong Phat and his son, Ly Chokchai — also a director of Steung Meteuk Hydropower Co. Ltd. — present.

Huafei Anhe Group reported that it’s already blasting the mountains to create a roughly 2,454-m (8,051-ft) diversion tunnel, but it’s unclear whether either Chinese company would be involved in the clearing of forests for reservoir basins, a task usually reserved for Cambodian contractors.

Eang Ung, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Mines and Energy, hung up the phone on us before we could ask any questions.

REDD vs. green

The new dam is part of the Cambodian government’s $9 billion push to boost domestic power generation, with a focus on cleaner sources of energy. Hydropower, which currently accounts for roughly a third of Cambodia’s energy mix is expected to reach 3,000 MW of capacity by 2040. These plans mean finding new locations for hydropower dams, putting green energy development in conflict with current conservation plans.

The Stung Meteuk project is being built inside Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary, where New York-headquartered NGO Wildlife Alliance is currently developing the Samkos REDD+ project, which aims to generate carbon credits from more than 282,000 hectares (697,000 acres) of forest in the wildlife sanctuary.

The Stung Meteuk’s plans overlap with roughly 1,600 hectares (4,000 acres) of the Samkos REDD+ project area, although at present the REDD+ is still undergoing validation and verification, meaning it hasn’t yet sold any credits.

Suwanna Gauntlett, executive director of Wildlife Alliance, said the Cardamom Forest Protection Program (CFPP) rangers, consisting of Wildlife Alliance staff and Ministry of Environment rangers, do have a station some 15 km (9 mi) north of the Stung Meteuk project, but have so far been denied entry to the dam.

“CFPP rangers conduct regular aerial surveys, which have revealed small-scale illegal logging outside the locations of the three reservoirs,” Gauntlett said in an email. “Although the company has not yet begun clearing the three sites, access to the hydropower dam project is strictly managed by company security, and CFPP rangers do not have access to the area for on-the-ground patrols. CFPP has made several unsuccessful attempts to meet with the company management.”

Gauntlett added that any deforestation within REDD+ project areas means that fewer carbon credits are issued, but said the net emissions reductions each credit represents is unaffected.

“The forest loss and emissions impacts will be assessed in upcoming monitoring reports, and the number of carbon credits issued adjusted accordingly,” she said.

Chuop Paris, the ministry’s REDD+ representative, declined to comment to Mongabay, referring us to Khvay Atitya, the ministry’s spokesperson. Atitya refused to answer questions over the phone, instead requesting they be sent over messaging app Telegram. He has since read but not responded to our questions.

Verra, the carbon credit certifying body that’s currently investigating Wildlife Alliance’s other REDD+ project in the Cardamoms over allegations of human rights abuse, also didn’t answer questions sent by Mongabay.

But while those involved in conserving the Cardamoms remained silent, logging continues within Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary. A truck laden with four large slabs of timber reportedly taken from the mountains of the sanctuary was stopped and seized on the edges of the sanctuary in Battambang province, just north of Pursat, on June 10.

Kort Boran, director of the Battambang provincial department of environment, told Mongabay in a phone interview in June 2024 that the size of the truck didn’t suggest it had come from a commercial logging operation.

Boran confirmed that they suspected the timber had come from deep in the mountains of Pursat, likely from within Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary, but said he had never heard of the Stung Meteuk hydropower project or reports of timber being trafficked from it. He declined to answer specific questions on the reputations of Ly Yong Phat and Try Pheap.

“We enforce the law. We have captured many [trucks] for the last six months,” Boran told Mongabay. “We have been conducting large campaigns these days. We rarely see [timber] transported out without our knowledge because we conduct patrols and stop all trucks for checking.”

Cambodia’s impending rainy season will likely hamper progress on the Stung Meteuk dam — and the associated logging operations — for the coming months, but only time will tell how much forest will be consumed by the dam.

Banner image: A section of the Stung Meteuk hydropower project within Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary. Image by Gerald Flynn / Mongabay.