New dams call into question Cambodia’s commitment to REDD+ projects

PURSAT, Cambodia — The Cambodian government has approved at least three new irrigation dams across the Cardamom Mountains, carving even deeper into forests currently being used for the Southern Cardamom REDD+ and Samkos REDD+ carbon credit projects.

Construction is yet to begin on the new dams, which are slated to be built in Battambang, Koh Kong and Pursat provinces. Officials from the Ministry of Environment, the Ministry of Water Resources and Meteorology, and the Ministry of Mines and Energy all declined to comment on the irrigation dams or their environmental impacts.

The approval of these dams raises further questions about the government’s commitment to the REDD+ mechanism for preserving forests. The Ministry of Environment, alongside New York-headquartered NGO Wildlife Alliance, co-manages both the Southern Cardamom REDD+ and the Samkos REDD+ projects, which will lose a further 5,200 hectares (about 12,850 acres) to the new irrigation dams.

These same forests have already seen significant deforestation in recent months due to the ongoing construction of five new hydropower dams with reservoirs that collectively span 15,000 hectares (about 37,000 acres).

Cambodia’s drive for “green” energy is now undermining REDD+ projects as forest is cleared to make way for reservoirs, transmission lines and the supporting infrastructure of the dams, resulting in fewer carbon credits available for sale from both the Southern Cardamom REDD+ and Samkos REDD+ projects.

“It is true that the construction of these dams and roads will cause significant forest loss,” Suwanna Gauntlett, director of Wildlife Alliance, told Mongabay.

All of this is happening within forests classified as protected by the Cambodian government, meaning vast numbers of trees will need to be felled to clear a path for the reservoirs of dams, whether used for irrigation or hydropower generation.

Dams driving deforestation in the Cardamoms

“We receive no benefits at all from the new dams, we get zero benefits,” said Rim Sao Si, deputy chief of the commune of Chumnoab in Koh Kong province, close to both the Southern Cardamom REDD+ project and one of the new hydropower dams in Thma Bang district.

This isn’t Si’s first brush with dams. A previous hydropower project, the now-infamous Stung Cheay Areng Dam, was set to inundate the valley where Si and many communities have lived for generations.

Si, like most of the people living in Thma Bang, belongs to the Chorng ethnicity, and in 2014 they scored a rare win for nature in Cambodia. The relatively small group of Indigenous communities joined forces with environmental activism group Mother Nature Cambodia to protest the construction of the 108-megawatt Stung Cheay Areng Dam that was set to displace as many as 1,500 people. The dam also threatened habitats of the critically endangered Siamese crocodile (Crocodylus siamensis) and the endangered Asian elephant (Elephas maximus).

The conflicts with the government and Chinese dam developer Sinohydro culminated in Mother Nature’s founder, Alejandro Gonzalez-Davidson, being deported from Cambodia in 2015. But the public image of the dam became so tarnished that then-Prime Minister Hun Sen capitulated and the project was suspended before eventually being canceled.

“Before [Wildlife Alliance] came in and the REDD+ project began, there was a big company planning to build a dam here,” Si recounted. “The government and the NGOs did nothing to help, we were left alone to struggle against the project. After we successfully protected our community, [Wildlife Alliance] came in to get benefits from our persistence, from our struggle.”

Wildlife Alliance has consistently maintained that it works with communities across the REDD+ projects, pointing to various livelihood programs that it runs using funds generated from the sale of carbon credits. However, Indigenous communities have complained that these programs don’t make up for the conflicts caused by the REDD+ project.

Now, as hydropower dams and new irrigation dams proliferate across the Cardamoms, Si said she’s wary for the future of the forests that have long sustained the Indigenous communities.

“It’s like a war against the forest,” Si said.

The sale of carbon credits from the Southern Cardamom REDD+ project has done little to dissuade the government from developing hydropower dams inside the project area’s protected forest. The Veal Thmor Kambot Dam is being built directly inside the Southern Cardamom REDD+ project area, while another, the Middle Russei Chrum Dam, is being built on the project’s border, resulting in deforestation inside the REDD+ project area.

Gauntlett of Wildlife Alliance said that, based on the government’s environmental impact assessments, the Veal Thmor Kambot project is being built on 632 hectares (1,562 acres) of land inside the Southern Cardamom REDD+ project. But neither Gauntlett nor the environment ministry have made these documents public.

“While we regret the government’s decision to proceed with the construction of hydropower dams within the project zones, we recognize this sits within a broader context of unavoidable trade-offs that all nations face as they chart a sustainable development path,” Gauntlett said, mirroring comments she gave when Mongabay previously reported on new dams in the Cardamoms.

Logging persists despite government ban

Another hydropower dam, Stung Meteuk, is being built across Koh Kong and Pursat provinces, overlapping with roughly 1,600 hectares (nearly 4,000 acres) of an area marked out for the upcoming Samkos REDD+ project. The Samkos REDD+ is yet to generate carbon credits, with Wildlife Alliance waiting until it’s possible to certify the project under certifier Verra’s new methodology in early 2025, according to Gauntlett.

However, the area of forest earmarked for the Samkos REDD+ project is already sustaining heavy losses to illegal loggers operating under the cover of the Stung Meteuk hydropower dam.

In June, Mongabay identified instances of illegal logging linked to the dam. A few months later, Environment Minister Eang Sophalleth wrote to Ly Yong Phat, the developer of the dam — an infamous ruling party senator and tycoon with a documented history of illegal logging and land grabbing —  ordering that logging cease.

Logging routes can be seen snaking out from inside dam sites being developed by Ly Yong Phat’s company, Steung Meteuk Hydropower Co. Ltd. These logging routes originate from the sites of the three reservoirs that will serve the dam(s) and lead directly into a section of the protected Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary, where Wildlife Alliance plans to develop the Samkos REDD+ project.

According to Gauntlett, the logging ban is still in place. This was later confirmed by Khvay Atitya, spokesperson for the Ministry of Environment.

But there’s little doubt over the enforcement of the ban. Both satellite imagery and Global Forest Watch deforestation alerts indicate that the logging has persisted and that much of it has taken place outside of the area the company is licensed to clear.

When Mongabay visited the site of the Stung Meteuk project on Oct. 18, alongside publicly funded French broadcaster France24, which released a documentary on issues facing Cambodian REDD+ projects, piles of freshly sawn logs were seen stacked around the sawmill.

Both the Ministry of Environment and Wildlife Alliance have labeled the documentary false, although neither of their statements listed any factual inaccuracies or errors.

Compared to documentation of the Stung Meteuk sawmill from July, the operation seen by Mongabay in October appeared larger, more sophisticated, and had accumulated more timber. However, it was difficult to determine how active the sawmill was at the time of the visit, although freshly sawn timber was seen littered around the site.

Mongabay was unable to contact Ly Yong Phat or his company. The senator and his eponymous LYP Group were sanctioned by the U.S. government in September for involvement in human trafficking. Since then, the company’s website and emails have ceased to function, while phone calls to numbers listed for the company went unanswered. Many of Ly Yong Phat’s companies are now no longer registered on the Cambodian Ministry of Commerce’s site, making it difficult to know whether he’s still attached to the hydropower project.

To conserve and credit, or deforest and develop

Environment Minister Eang Sophalleth didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment, but was busy showcasing Cambodia’s carbon market potential at the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, where Cambodia was a notable absence at the booths.

The sale of carbon credits remains at the heart of Cambodia’s commitment to reducing emissions under the Paris Agreement. Known as its nationally determined contribution, this commitment, announced in 2020, lays out the country’s climate action plan to halve both historical emissions and the rate of deforestation by 2030, while also implementing ambitious reforestation projects to bring Cambodia’s forest cover back up to 60% by 2050. The government hasn’t released official forest cover figures since 2018, but analysis suggests the remaining forest cover hovers around 40% of the total land area, while primary forest is vanishing at an alarming rate.

Slowing and reducing deforestation through REDD+ projects is being touted as an instrument in the climate toolbox for developing countries. Yet, increasingly, questions are being raised over the Cambodian government’s commitment to carbon offsetting efforts that routinely find themselves embroiled in scandals.

Cambodia’s first foray into the carbon market ended prematurely and — some argue, disastrously — in Oddar Meanchey province, with similar mistakes made in Kampong Thom province’s Tumring REDD+ project. But even larger, more established and objectively better-managed projects such as Keo Seima REDD+ in the northeastern province of Mondulkiri have come under fire for failing to secure the land tenure of Indigenous communities whose traditional farmlands form part of the project’s accounting area.

Of the 20 known REDD+ projects in Cambodia, eight aim to generate carbon credit sales from forests. Yet while the various international NGOs and the environment ministry champion REDD+ projects as a means of slowing Cambodia’s rate of deforestation, other government ministries routinely make decisions that suggest a misalignment of goals between the conservationists and the government.

In the Cardamoms, new dams are continuously being developed in areas of intact forest, leading loggers to exploit the surrounding forest. The short-lived approval of a basalt mining operation in the heart of the Keo Seima REDD+ project underscored the government’s ultimate ownership and control over land from which conservationists hoped to sell carbon credits. More recently, two REDD+ projects are set to be impacted by the development of new transmission lines that threaten to cut Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary in half, despite clear alternative routes being suggested by the environment ministry.

Proponents of REDD+ projects have repeatedly conceded that they’re unable to prevent state-backed infrastructure developments and will simply excise affected forest from their accounting areas, resulting in fewer carbon credits to sell. Roughly 1,600 hectares of forest inside the Samkos REDD+ is planned to be cleared for reservoirs at the Stung Meteuk Dam, which can easily be excised from the REDD+ project based on the dam developer’s plans. But the illegal logging, which isn’t planned, is harder to account for.

Gauntlett said Wildlife Alliance hadn’t been granted any formal permission to monitor the site of the Stung Meteuk Dam to prevent illegal logging. But in March 2024, two Wildlife Alliance staff were photographed alongside government officials examining timber felled in connection to the dam. When asked about this, Gauntlett didn’t respond.

Danny Cullenward, a U.S.-based climate economist and lawyer who has examined the flaws in the carbon market, said government interventions — such as approving dams inside REDD+ projects — undermines the promise of such projects.

“You either need a regime that is capable of providing the appropriate incentives to discourage the bad thing from happening on the ground, and/or a mechanism to compensate,” he said.

Cullenward said he recognizes that government decisions on what happens to land included in REDD+ projects are beyond the control of the NGOs co-managing the projects, and that Cambodian timber profits and energy infrastructure investments likely dwarf the financial benefits the government receives from REDD+ projects.

The Stung Meteuk Dam, for instance, is a $440 million project, while timber cut from around the dam site has been sold through secretive auctions at unpublished values. Cambodia’s timber industry has proven lucrative, with much of the ill-gotten wood sold overseas for hundreds of thousands of dollars. From 2012 through 2014, infamous Cambodian timber trafficker Try Pheap was estimated to have earned roughly $300 million from the sale of the now critically endangered Siamese rosewood (Dalbergia cochinchinensis) that was logged illegally while clearing the reservoir basin for a hydropower dam in the Cardamom Mountains.

The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries announced in December 2024 that it would be selling 5,365 cubic meters (189,463 cubic feet) of seized illegally logged timber, worth some $450,000, at an auction on Jan. 8, 2025. It’s unclear who won the auction or whether it went ahead, but authorities announced what appears to be a second auction of a roughly similar volume of illicit timber that was to be held in early February 2025.

Can the carbon market guarantee conservation?

Cullenward said the carbon market is ill-equipped for the shocks and scandals that have surged in recent years. Incredibly large projects have been taken down by such scandals, as have senior figures within the carbon market, leading to what Cullenward called a “crisis of confidence” within the industry.

“We’ve had years of unending controversy without any substantive response,” he said.

Indeed, Human Rights Watch (HRW) conducted a two-year investigation into alleged abuses at the Southern Cardamom REDD+, resulting in credit certifier Verra temporarily suspending the sale of carbon credits from the project, only to reinstate it following a desk-based review of evidence accrued by HRW. Wildlife Alliance has vehemently denied the allegations, but on Dec. 12, nonprofit watchdog Carbon Market Watch filed a complaint against Verra’s handling of the case to the Integrity Council for Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM), a new governance body aimed at ensuring the quality of carbon credits issued.

A study published in Nature Communications in November 2024 suggested that as few as 16% of carbon credits issued across 2,346 REDD+ projects studied by the authors constitute real emission reductions. The authors wrote: “Carbon crediting mechanisms need to be reformed fundamentally to meaningfully contribute to climate change mitigation.”

The carbon market’s failure to address these many and varied issues, including human rights abuses, has seen the market value of carbon credits fall by as much as 61%, according to some industry estimates. Even new regulations adopted at COP29 aimed to bolster faith in carbon trading have been met with criticism for the lack of inclusivity in the decision-making process over the new rules.

All of this raises the question of who is ultimately, and legally, responsible when the claims made by REDD+ projects and their proponents turn out to be false. If the government co-manages REDD+ projects that promise to protect Cambodian forests, but also approves large-scale infrastructure that results in widespread deforestation in that same forest, can the government’s stated commitments to conservation be trusted?

These are the questions that Cullenward said drives him to examine the realities of the carbon market.

“The reason I like to dive into this stuff is that [carbon offsetting] is ultimately a promise about what happens to the atmosphere, and when big political and economic forces are at work, the atmosphere gets the short end of the stick,” he said. “[I]f Cambodia decides hydropower is the way, the atmosphere loses. The notion that these programs are there to protect the atmosphere is a very weak point.”

Banner image: In October 2024, deforestation linked to the construction of the Middle Russei Chrum dam was already spilling over into the Southern Cardamom REDD+ project area. Image by Gerald Flynn / Mongabay.

Citations:

Frewer, T. (2021). What exactly do REDD+ projects produce? A materialist analysis of carbon offset production from a REDD+ project in Cambodia. Political Geography, 91, 102480. doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2021.102480

Probst, B. S., Toetzke, M., Kontoleon, A., Díaz Anadón, L., Minx, J. C., Haya, B. K., … Hoffmann, V. H. (2024). Systematic assessment of the achieved emission reductions of carbon crediting projects. Nature Communications, 15(1). doi:10.1038/s41467-024-53645-z

Credits

Isabel Esterman Editor

This story first appeared on Mongabay

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and Mongabay, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.