Ongoing land rights disputes in the Keo Seima REDD project in Cambodia

Wildlife Conservation Society and Verra’s auditors failed to report the land rights disputes.

PHOTO Credit: Jack Brook. A farm in a Bunong Indigenous village in the Keo Seima REDD project.

Mongabay recently published a two-part series on Indigenous land rights and the Keo Seima REDD project in Cambodia. The articles were co-written by Jack Brook and a Cambodian journalist “whose name is being withheld due to security concerns”.

Mongabay found that farmers in the Keo Seima REDD project area, “face arrests, imprisonment and harassment from authorities as they try to eke out a living amid rising economic pressures and land insecurity”.

Since the REDD project started in 2009, the project has sold 18,874,424 credits, to companies including BlackRock, Disney, Boston Consulting Group, Boeing, Ecologi, and PrimaKlima.

The REDD project is run by the Ministry of Environment and the Wildlife Conservation Society. In October 2016, REDD-Monitor interviewed Tom Evans of Wildlife Conservation Society, who told me that,

The project has a large community element, which concentrates on helping the mainly indigenous communities obtain communal land titles, and on a range of community development activities through local NGOs.

The project has earned millions of dollars from the sale of carbon credits. Some of this money has been spent on road construction and village wells for drinking water. Bunong Indigenous leaders in Keo Seima told Mongabay that this money has “made meaningful impacts for their communities”.

WCS told Mongabay that the project meets Verra’s standards, and that,

We are confident that the project has demonstrably and significantly improved the situation for IPLCs [Indigenous peoples and local communities].

Mongabay interviewed more than 70 Bunong people living in Keo Seima, as well as WCS leadership, Ministry of Environment rangers, Indigenous activists, lawyers, and several conservation researchers working in Keo Seima. In addition the journalists reviewed land surveys and maps, government records, legal documents, and more than 1,300 pages of project documents submitted to Verra.

Between October 2023 and April 2024, Mongabay spent nearly three weeks visiting 11 of the REDD project’s Indigenous partner villages. The journalists note that the time they spent in Keo Seima is “equivalent to the time Verra-approved auditors have spent visiting Keo Seima communities since 2015”.

Mongabay writes that,

“The hallmark of the Keo Seima REDD+ project has been financial support for its 20 REDD+ partner villages, yet these investments appear unable to compensate for the loss of land and restrictions placed on farming in all communities. They have had limited success in bolstering individual livelihoods at a large scale.”

The land disputes

The Ministry of Environment is ultimately responsible for the REDD project. And it is undermining the rights of Indigenous communities, Mongabay writes.

Mongabay obtained government records that show that the Ministry of Environment has helped block at least four Bunong villages from receiving ownership of thousands of hectares of farmlands. It has also handed over sacred sites to private developers.

The Ministry of Environment has prevented other Indigenous villages in the REDD project from receiving communal land ownership.

Mongabay writes that,

In these villages and other communities throughout Keo Seima, Indigenous and local farmers daily risk arrest, crop destruction, property confiscation and imprisonment by authorities linked to the REDD+ project, through uneven enforcement of unsettled and unclear boundaries between areas where people can live and farm and restricted conservation areas.

WCS has tried to mitigate these impacts, Mongabay writes, but WCS did not disclose the significant land conflicts to Verra, as required by Verra’s standards.

WCS told Mongabay that the REDD project has not prevented Indigenous communities from using their farmlands and says it has not “knowingly misled” Verra’s auditors.

Verra’s response

Mongabay gave a detailed list of its findings to Verra. “We take any allegations of improper conduct in Verra-certified projects very seriously,” a Verra spokesperson replied.

The spokesperson also noted that Mongabay’s findings “differ dramatically from the documented evidence” provided by Verra’s auditors.

Verra’s spokesperson added that Verra will “properly review, assess and decide what action (if any) to take.”

Since 2017, WCS has produced three monitoring reports. These reports were submitted to Verra and its auditors. Two of the reports state that “No ongoing disputes reported to date.”

WCS told Mongabay in an initial statement that,

At the time of writing the 2020-2021 report, there were no ongoing disputes with a clear legal basis, considered legitimate, affecting the project area, or caused by project activities.

WCS amended this position in a later statement to Mongabay: “We acknowledge that some disputes may have been missed for various reasons.”

The auditors failed to report land rights disputes

In three separate audits, Verra’s auditors also failed to report land rights disputes in the project area.

Environmental Services, Inc. audited the project for the 2016-2017 period. During this time, the Ministry of Environment had already decided to drastically reduce the amount of land allocated to several villages.

Environmental Services noted that “project developers should pay special attention to whether land use needs of existing communities are growing” and that “future auditors should investigate whether land either titled to indigenous communities or recognized as belonging to indigenous communities is sufficient to sustain the communities.”

Aster Global Environmental Solutions carried out the audit for the 2018-2019 period. But the auditors did not visit two of the villages most affected by land rights disputes.

Mongabay reports that,

Auditors appeared to accept at face value the claims of WCS and the Ministry of Environment in their monitoring report submitted to Verra in 2020 that “resources are currently more than sufficient” for Indigenous communities and “population growth within the communities has not reached the level of the reserved area in each ICT [Indigenous Communal Title].”

Neither Environmental Services nor Aster Global Environmental Solutions responded to Mongabay’s requests for comment.

In a written response to Mongabay, WCS acknowledged that some Indigenous communities had received less land than had been identified in surveys carried out under the project.

Not enough land for farming

Many of the leaders in Bunong villages told Mongabay that they did not have enough land for farming because the Ministry of Environment refused to recognise their land ownership claims.

At first, the Keo Seima REDD project made some progress with communal land titles. Seven Indigenous communities in the project area have received communal land titles. But in 2016, the REDD project area along with all other protected areas in Cambodia, were handed over to the authority of the Ministry of Environment.

The remaining 13 Keo Seima REDD project partner villages have not received communal land titles, despite the fact that some of them have been in the final stage of the process for several years.

A 2020 report by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Cambodia points out that, “There is currently no process allowing communities to object to the instructions from the Ministry of Environment.” The report states that registering communal land in Protected Areas is an “impossibility”.

Mongabay writes that,

Despite telling Verra that it would support Indigenous communities to obtain land ownership, the Ministry of Environment has in practice undermined efforts to deliver communal land titles to Bunong villages in and around the REDD+ project.

Mongabay reports several examples of government officials destroying villager’s crops, burning down huts, confiscating motorbikes and cars, and arresting people for farming.

In 2023, law enforcement officials burned down a hut built by a Bunong farmer. He had attempted to expand his farmland by about 50 metres. Ministry of Environment rangers destroyed his crops, arguing he was illegally expanding his land. The farmer has abandoned the land and it is now overgrown with grass.

His village, Sre I is in the process of applying for its communal land title.

The Bunong villager told Mongabay that,

“Since the incident happened, I have mostly abandoned my farm . . . I am afraid the Ministry of Environment rangers will come back.

“I had expanded my farm because I did not have enough land to plant crops and keep it for the next generation. If I did not do this, I would not have enough land for my livelihood.”

Mongabay points out that in most of the Keo Seima villages, “there is a lack of clarity as to where Bunong people can farm, both due to the stalled communal land titles and murky boundaries separating farmland from protected conservation areas”.

A WCS employee told Mongabay that contradictory zoning and land titling by the Ministry of Environment has mixed up farmland with restricted conservation areas in the REDD project area. This has created “a really complicated conflict” that is driving communities “crazy”.

Mongabay concludes that, “Not even WCS seems to know where communities in Keo Seima can legally farm.”

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