The tussle over protecting or exploiting Cambodia’s natural resources has long been a contentious issue in the kingdom, with environmentalists threatened, arrested and even killed in the past decade.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/2/cambodia-accused-of-conducting-political-trial-as-it-jails-green-activists
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Three of the activists sentenced on Tuesday had previously been jailed for organising a peaceful march protesting against the filling-in of a lake in the capital to create land for real estate developments.
From 2001 to 2015, a third of Cambodia’s primary forests – some of the world’s most biodiverse and a key carbon sink – were cleared, and tree cover loss accelerated faster than anywhere else in the world, according to the World Resources Institute.
Much of the cleared land has been granted to businesses in concessions that experts say have driven deforestation and dispossession in the country.