Civil society organisations (CSOs) working on the environment and human rights have expressed concern about filling parts of Boeung Tamok Lake to create new parcels of land on the outskirts of Phnom Penh.

Located in Prek Pnov district’s Kouk Roka commune, Boeung Tamok, also known as Kob Srov Lake, is the largest lake remaining within the municipal borders with an area of more than 3,000ha.

• Reconnaissance Energy Africa, an oil and gas company with headquarters in Canada, has recently begun exploratory drilling in northern Namibia.
• Conservationists and local communities are concerned over the potential environmental impact that oil and gas extraction could have on such an important ecosystem.
• Northern Namibia and Botswana have a number of interconnected watersheds including the Okavango Delta – the potential for pollutants to enter watercourses and spread throughout the region are a particular concern.

On December 21, Reconnaissance Energy Af

• Once covered in vast tropical forests, East Kalimantan, in the Indonesian half of Borneo Island, is today the most intensively mined province in Indonesia.
• Surface mining for coal has left behind vast expanses of barren land across the province.
• Under Indonesian law, mining companies are responsible for rehabilitating their mining concessions.

Main photo: young oil palms await planting on land deforested by South Korea’s Korindo in the Indonesian province of Papua (Image: Mighty Earth)

In 2019, South Korea imported 745,000 metric tonnes of palm oil, up from 194,000 metric tonnes in 2005. It is one of the fastest-growing markets for the commodity in the world, driven by government policies to boost palm oil as a lucrative green industry and to secure food and energy supplies from overseas.

The Land Portal Foundation’s launches the China Country Portfolio - a knowledge piece with a comprehensive understanding of the country’s land issues. Hit by COVID-19 a year ago, China is ever more pressed to adapt land usage rights to protect food sovereignty while also stimulating investment.

The Kingdom of Lesotho recently signed on to the International Fund for Agricultural Development’s (IFAD) extension of the Smallholder Agriculture Development Project (SADP) to improve the livelihoods of vulnerable small-scale farmers. SADP II, the project’s second phase, targets youth and women to build the rural economy and sustainable farming. 

Seeking quick returns, Chinese investors are driving a scramble for plantation land in parts of northern Myanmar.

The Cardamom Mountains sit off the Gulf of Thailand in southern Cambodia and provide important habitat for a multitude of plant and animal species, many of them already threatened with extinction.

Due to Cardamoms’ remoteness, they had largely been spared the human encroachment that has razed much of the rainforest across the country – until infrastructure development in 2020 opened up the area to loggers, poachers, and others seeking to exploit the region’s forests.

The Energy Ministry has commenced a stakeholder engagement in communities with the Jomoro Municipality of the Western Region for the acquisition of a 20,000-acre plot of land for the Petroleum Hub.

Back in March 2019, Cabinet gave the approval for the establishment of the much-awaited petroleum hub in the Western Region to house all infrastructure projects in the petroleum industry.

Sandwiched between China and India, the tiny Himalayan nation of Bhutan is feeling the squeeze as its giant neighbours square up for supremacy.

A close ally of India, Bhutan got a shock when China made sudden new claims in the summer - over a wildlife sanctuary in the east of the country, on land that had not been considered disputed.

Most Bhutanese commentators don't want to discuss this in detail, but many believe Beijing is trying to drag the Buddhist majority nation - population 750,000 - into the territorial stand-off with India.

Environment, forest and climate change minister Md Shahab Uddin on Sunday directed the country’s eight divisional commissioners for taking measures not to lease out forestlands to individuals and businesses and to evict the grabbers of forestlands.

At a routine meeting with the divisional commissioners at his office, Shahab Uddin asked the officials to pass on the order to all 64 deputy commissioners not to lease out anymore forestland in protecting the country’s forests.

• Indonesia’s environment ministry has issued a new regulation allowing protected forest areas to be cleared for a “food estate” program.
• The program is aimed at boosting domestic crop supplies, but critics say it prioritizes the interests of agribusiness at the expense of small farmers and the environment.
• Indonesia degazetted 26 million hectares (64 million acres) of its forest over the past 20 years, primarily for large-scale agriculture, and today has 29.7 million hectares (73.4 million acres) of protected forest, an area the size of Italy.