The Great Climate Scandal. Part 2: Illegal logging, human rights abuses, and deforestation in REDD projects in Cambodia

Matt Shea recently presented a documentary on Channel 4 looking at the world of carbon offsetting. Part 1 of REDD-Monitor’s series of posts based on the documentary is here:

Shea started digging into the world of offsetting. “What I found wasn’t good,” he says. “In fact it was pretty shocking. All over the Global South from Kenya to Peru there were reports of forest offsetting projects that seemed to be doing more harm than good, to both the planet and to local people.”

The following three projects appear in headlines on the screen while Shea is talking:

• The Northern Kenya Grassland Carbon Project which bills itself as the world’s largest soil carbon removal project. A 2023 Survival International report titled “Blood Carbon: how a carbon offsets scheme makes millions from Indigenous land in Northern Kenya” exposed how the project is profiting by destroying Indigenous Peoples’ livelihoods and way of life.

• The African Forestry Impact Platform, an investment fund created in 2022 by Australian investment firm New Forests. A 2023 report by the Oakland Institute highlights why focussing on tree plantations and carbon offsets is a false solution to the climate crisis.

• The Southern Cardamom REDD project in Cambodia, run by Wildlife Alliance. Human Rights Watch has been investigating allegations of human rights abuses related to the project since April 2022. Verra suspended the project in June 2023.

Shea notes that,

“There seemed to be a high number of particularly problematic projects in Cambodia, where there’s widespread corruption and illegal logging. The authoritarian Cambodian government has been accused of arrests and assaults on environmental activists.”

Illegal logging in Cambodia

The next article on screen is by Amnesty International. It’s an investigation into the impacts of illegal logging on Indigenous Peoples’ rights and cultures in Cambodia.

That article is based on a report that Amnesty International published in 2022 about ongoing deforestation in Prey Lang and Prey Preah Roka forests.

During 2021, an area of 6,271 hectares was deforested in the two protected areas.

Richard Pearshouse, Amnesty International’s Head of Crisis and Environment comments that,

“Rampant illegal logging in Cambodia is posing an existential threat to the country’s remaining primary forests, and the Indigenous peoples who depend on them for their livelihoods, their culture and their spiritual practices.

“Time and time again, government officials who are supposed to be protecting these precious forests are instead profiting from their destruction by allowing the illegal logging trade to flourish.”

Shea speaks to Leng Ouch, who won the Goldman Prize in 2016. Ouch was arrested for his work exposing illegal logging in 2020 and 2021. Ouch sent Shea footage of illegal logging and told him that,

“We need your help, from international organisations, from international donors, from world leaders. We have to stop the human rights abuse. Stop illegal logging in Cambodia, and stop timber business with Vietnam and China.”

Southern Cardamom REDD project

Shea looks up a 2019 video on the South China Morning Post website about Wildlife Alliance’s operations in the Southern Cardamom REDD project. The video is titled, “‘Soldiers of the forest’: Protecting Cambodia’s Cardamom”.

Over footage from SCMP’s video of Wildlife Alliance and government rangers burning down a poaching camp, Shea tells us that the REDD project has sold carbon offsets to companies like Stella McCartney, Guchi, Air France, and Deliveroo.

Shea says,

“There are allegations that there are human rights abuses being carried out on the Indigenous populations in these forests. It’s actually being investigated by Human Rights Watch. So Verra, who had verified this project has put it on pause.”

He speaks to Meng Kroypunlock, a journalist with Southeast Asia Globe. In October 2023, Southeast Asia Globe worked together with Süddeutsche Zeitung and SourceMaterial on an investigation into the Southern Cardamom REDD project.

Shea asks Kroypunlok what the local Indigenous communities think about what Wildlife Alliance is doing there.

Kroypunlok replies:

“They’re scared of Wildlife Alliance. When they see the patrollers from Wildlife Alliance they just run. Or sometimes Wildlife Alliance staff, they burn their farm. . . .

“They burn the farms because they think that the Indigenous People, they grow in the farmland.”

Kroypunlok explains that Wildlife Alliance patrols together with the Cambodian government rangers. “They have guns,” he says.

Shea sums up his opinion of Wildlife Alliance’s operations:

On the one hand it appears this organisation is doing a decent job protecting the forest, Wildlife Alliance. But I don’t know how I feel about local Indigenous People being terrified of armed groups going around telling them they can’t cut down trees and can’t farm here or there, when it’s all basically just to make giant corporations in the west feel better about themselves.

Tumring REDD project

Shea turns to the Tumring REDD project in Cambodia. In October 2023, an investigation by Climate Home News and Unearthed, Greenpeace’s investigative journalism project, found high levels of deforestation in the project area.

“You can see from satellite imagery,” Shea says, “it looks like most of the forest is gone.”

Shea speaks to Joe Sandler Clarke, who works with Unearthed. He asks him what’s going on in Tumring. Clarke replies,

Really high deforestation is what’s going on. You’re seeing just from satellite images, you can see huge swathes of the forest have been lost.

REDD-Monitor first wrote about the Tumring REDD project in September 2021.

At the end of August 2021, the Korea Federation for Environmental Movements had published a report about the Tumring REDD project titled, “Large-Scale Deforestation at Korea Forest Service’s REDD+ Site in Cambodia”.

The research in Cambodia was led by Leng Ouch, and the investigation revealed that huge areas of the REDD project had been cleared. The rate of forest loss was accelerating. Industrial plantations of rubber, cassava, and cashew nuts were planted where the forest had stood.

The investigation by Climate Home News and Unearthed confirms the failure of the project to stop deforestation - which has being going on for several years.

Unearthed’s Clarke confirms to Shea that the project “has Verra’s stamp of approval” and that carbon offsets are still on the market from Tumring REDD project.

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