“We are stuck like chickens in a cage.” How an Indigenous Bunong woman describes living in the Keo Seima REDD project in Cambodia

The project has serious impacts on the livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples, while failing to stop deforestation.

PHOTO Credit: Rangers patrolling in Keo Seima, Everland.

The Keo Seima REDD project covers an area of 166,000 hectares in Mondulkiri province in the northeast of Cambodia. Wildlife Conservation Society is the technical and implementation adviser to the Ministry of Environment, which is the project proponent.

The project has sold almost 19 million carbon credits, raising more than US$3 million to support “protected area management and community development”, according to Wildlife Conservation Society.

Buyers of the carbon credits include Disney, BlackRock, PrimaKlima, and Boeing.

The REDD project covers about 57% of the Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary. On the map below (from the Project Design Document), the REDD project is in dark green and the Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary is in light green:

A recent report written by Simon Counsell with field research by Survival International finds that there is no information about how the money from sales of carbon credits is distributed between the Cambodian government and Wildlife Conservation Society.

The report states that, “The project’s finances are, in fact, a complete black hole.”

A company called Siema Carbon Company LLC was incorporated in the tax and secrecy haven of Delaware on 26 August 2015.

Counsell did some digging and found that the company appears in Wildlife Conservation Society’s 2016 tax form. Wildlife Conservation Society has a series of companies incorporated in Delaware, “organized by WCS in order to carry out its tax exempt, charitable, conservation mission”. WCS is the sole member of the Limited Liability Company and officers of the company are WCS employees.

In 2016, the tax form shows that Siema Carbon Company had assets of US$2,475,834 and income of US$120,203. By 2020, Siema Carbon Company’s assets stood at US$21,788,468. In 2021, assets reached US$30,260,330 and income US$11,454,300.

Project impacts on Indigenous peoples

The vast majority of the 18,000 people who live in and around the REDD project area are Bunong, with some Stieng, Raong and Kraol Indigenous people. They are dependent on the forest for their livelihoods. The protected area and REDD project are have a “devastating impact on their ability to live their lives and feed their families”, Survival International’s researchers found.

Indigenous people are harassed by Ministry of Environment rangers if they are caught practising rotational farming or collecting medicines or other items in the forest.

Villagers have to pay “fines”. But logging by companies and wealthy individuals, who can afford to pay for the rangers to look away, is ignored.

A Bunong activist told Survival International that,

“We are the people who protect the forest. The ones destroying the forest are the companies who do large scale forest clearing, but that goes unseen. Instead, they (conservationists) focus on the small-scale clearing done by us Indigenous people and they view us as forest destroyers. There are some projects now, like REDD+ which I can say are destroying us Indigenous people.”

And a Bunong woman said that,

“For generations we were able to support ourselves and the needs of our children, but look at us now, we are sitting here in fear [of the rangers]. We are stuck like chickens in a cage.”

Free, prior and informed consent?

The Project Design Document describes a process of free, prior and informed consent. A Phnom Penh-based organisation called Community Legal Education Centre “assisted extensively”.

But several community members told Survival International that they had not really understood what the REDD project was. Some said they had not been consulted at all.

A Bunong villager told Survival International that,

“We’re upset at Community Legal Education Centre that was getting money from the REDD+ project to register land and pushed us to accept small amount of land quickly and then move on. None of them talk to us properly and explain, they always push.”

Land rights?

Cambodia’s 2001 Land Law includes Indigenous Community Land Titles, which allow for full and permanent ownership rights. Community Protected Areas, on the other hand, are only valid for 15 years and are renewable at the discretion of the government.

On its website WCS states that seven Indigenous Community Land Titles have been awarded in Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary.

One villager told Survival International that in 2014 WCS had helped to start the process of gaining an Indigenous Community Land Title. However, it had still not been issued. The villager was concerned that the land would be fragmented and lost by the time the title was issued.

Other villagers said that WCS dissuaded them from claiming Indigenous Community Land Titles and pressured them to establish Community Protect Areas instead.

One villager told Survival International that,

“It’s ridiculous the way the REDD project works to only give us a tiny land…and then allows a huge area of land for land [development] concessions and companies. . . . That’s why people in Keo Seima are starting to lose hope that they can protect their land.”

In 2024, Mongabay published a two-part series about ongoing land rights disputes in the Keo Seima REDD project. Mongabay reported that villagers in the project area, “face arrests, imprisonment and harassment from authorities as they try to eke out a living amid rising economic pressures and land insecurity”.

Verra’s auditors failed to report any land rights disputes.

Benefit sharing?

On its website, WCS states that,

Our innovative benefit-sharing mechanism, Cash for Communities, has delivered $1,000,000 to date, empowering local communities with the resources to invest in their long-term development goals.

Using money from the project, villages have built wells, toilets, a community hall, bought solar panels, and paid for community patrols. But spending plans for patrols or schooling had to be approved by WCS.

If a village exceeds the clearing of a set area of land for farming, money is deducted from that village’s payment.

A villager told Survival International that the project has a “complicated technical document with all the details about the points system, for example, if we do this we lose points, etc, but we don’t have it, they just showed it to us”. They were not sure what they are allowed to do.

Avoided emissions?

Survival International’s report includes an analysis of deforestation around the REDD project, based on Global Forest Watch data:

A community member told Survival International that the Environment Ministry’s patrols had previously focused on illegal logging. However, most of the best timber has now gone and patrols mainly focus on stopping people from farming.

Several people said that anyone who could afford a US$300 bribe could cut timber with impunity.

Survival International questions the additionality of the project as the project was a designated Protected Area before the REDD project started. Despite the continued deforestation, the project has continued to generate carbon credits because the “baseline” projection of deforestation was exaggerated.

Keo Seima’s baseline was calculated by using several logging concessions as the reference area. In 1994, parts of the project area had been allocated to Samling, the notoriously destructive Malaysian logging company. But the logging concession was suspended in 1999 as part of a national logging moratorium and the project area has been under legal protection since 2002.

Given the on-going deforestation around (and inside) the project area, Survival International concludes that, “whatever forest might be marginally conserved for a few years could be very vulnerable in the future”.

A Bunong community member told Survival International that,

“At first I thought REDD+ was good, but now I think who benefits from this? The salaries that go to the people at WCS, the people who do the patrols, but what about the other people and the loss of all that land?”