2009-10-05 12:15:54
PHNOM PENH, Oct. 5 (Xinhua) -- The number of visitors to the Preah Vihear Temple complex dropped by a-third in the third quarter of this year compared with the same period last year, according to a local media report on Monday.
The decrease was a reaction to the ongoing dispute with Thailand over ownership of the land surrounding the World Heritage site, Kong Vibol, director of Preah Vihear province's tourism department, told the Phnom Penh Post.
The official also blamed a general downturn in tourism arrivals, bad weather and lingering fears of influenza A/H1N1.
Only 12,214 people visited the temple complex in last quarter, down 33.93 percent from 18,487 visitors over the same period a year earlier, he was quoted by the report as saying.
The number of foreign visitors dropped 44.6 percent to 426, and the number of domestic tourists went down 34.04 percent to 11,788, Tourism Department figures showed.
Over the period, 47,682 people visited the province, including 40,857 from other parts of Cambodia, down 32.78 percent year-on-year, and 6,825 foreign visitors, down 89.17 percent, the Post reported.
Kong Vibol said he expected a recovery in the last quarter as the peak season begins and the global economy continues to show signs of recovery. Dissipating border tensions would also help, he added.
The Post said that Prime Minister Hun Sen announced in early September that Cambodian troops at the temple would be withdrawn following a bilateral agreement that effectively ended the 13-month standoff over the temple.
Om Phirom, chief of the temple's Heritage Police, said at the time the drawdown in troops led to a surge in tourist numbers, with around 200 Cambodian and 50 foreign tourists daily.
Editor: Bi Mingxin
*************
Source: CHINA VIEW
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
After delays, Cambodia rekindles stock market dream
5 October 2009
By Jason Szep
PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Construction cranes and unfinished high-rise buildings surround the silty marshland where a year from now Cambodia hopes to turn the page on decades of upheaval by opening a stock exchange.
The idea of a Cambodian stockmarket has been floated since the 1990s but has struggled for traction in a country known for a culture of political impunity, chronic poverty and a history of violence, including the Khmer Rouge "Killing Fields."
But authorities argue those days are over and plan to sign a deal this month with World City Co Ltd, a South Korean-backed developer, to start building a $6 million, four-storey stock exchange on the waterfront of a new financial district.
"We want to do it next year," Mey Vann, director of the financial industry department at Cambodia's Ministry of Economy and Finance, said in an interview. "It'll be good timing for us with the economic recovery."
It was supposed to open in September, a target set last year when South Korea's stock exchange operator agreed with the Cambodian government to set up and run a joint stock exchange.
But the global financial crisis intervened, ending an unprecedented boom which saw Cambodia's economy expand 10 percent annually in the five years up to 2008. Foreign investment collapsed, tourist arrivals fell by double digits and garment exports, a mainstay of the economy, shrank by 15 percent.
In recent weeks, Cambodian officials have cautioned against moving too fast, in some cases questioning whether a country whose education system was decimated during Pol Pot's 1975-79 reign of terror is ready to invest in stocks.
"We've been waiting for a green light," said Intyo Lee, project director for Korea Exchange, Asia's fourth-largest bourse operator which will own 49 percent of the exchange and is recruiting and training workers for it. Cambodian will own the rest.
"We're pretty much ready," he added, "but many people say it's too early. The government is trying to build consensus."
STARTING SMALL
The exchange expects to start small with just four or five companies issuing about $10 million worth of shares each, said Lee. That's comparable to neighboring Vietnam's first stock market launched in 2000 with its initial market capitalization of $43 million. Today, Vietnam's market is worth $27 billion.
Yet there are risks to Cambodian investors. In Vietnam, most of the investors were local, often unaware of the risks, and many were burned as the market steered a rollercoaster course. Meanwhile, foreign investors largely sought to dip into the potential high returns of an emerging frontier market while hedging their bets with a highly diversified portfolio.
Like its communist neighbor, Cambodia is giving privatizing state companies priority with a place to sell stock. The Finance Ministry has asked three state-owned companies to list shares: Telecom Cambodia, port operator Sihanoukville Autonomous Port and the Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority.
Some of those companies have a simple question: why do it?
"We don't have any financial constraints. I don't understand the reasons we are going to be listed," said Ek Sonn Chan, who runs the Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority, which employs about 600 people, has about $200 million in assets and generates about $25 million in annual revenue. He said the company is profitable.
"If we become a public company, maybe we are more responsible, more transparent and maybe we can help the government allocate financial support to our company. But in the meantime, we don't know much about how it happens. It's very new to Cambodia, very new to me," he said.
Others say the timing may not be right for some time. Foreign direct investment nearly halved to an estimated $490 million from $815 million in 2008, according to the International Monetary Fund, which expects Cambodia's economy to shrink nearly 3 percent this year before growing about 4 percent next year.
Most of the disappearing capital had flowed into construction projects, including a $2 billion satellite city on the outskirts of the capital Phnom Penh where the exchange will be built.
Developed by South Korean-backed World City, the two-year-old project known as Camko City aims to create a new financial district by 2018 spread over 125 hectares, complete with glass-walled office towers for stockbrokers, upmarket apartments, securities regulator offices and sleek retail spaces.
But construction has slowed, said Kim Duk-kon, a vice president at World City. Although the first phase is nearly complete with many of the residential villas built and sold, subsequent phases are on hold after capital dried up.
FLOODED SWAMPLAND
The area where the stock exchange will be built is flooded swampland on the edge of Boeung Kak Lake in the heart of the city. The Finance Ministry said the end of the rainy season this month will allow workers to begin building the exchange on the corner of what developers are calling Phnom Penh Boulevard.
Cambodian officials rejected an initial design, saying the exchange's exterior was too modern and not Cambodian enough. It has since been redesigned using traditional Khmer accents.
Vann at the Finance Ministry and Kim said a news conference this month will announce construction of the exchange. A new Securities and Exchange Commission of Cambodia, he added, is drafting market regulations that will be issued soon.
"We have a very good team at the Securities and Exchange Commission. They graduated from overseas. They are new blood in terms of enforcement of the law," he said. "Our law is very strict in terms of speculation."
Some observers are unconvinced and say authorities need to demonstrate how investors will be protected in a country with a reputation for corruption at nearly every level of the bureaucracy. Some fear speculative gambling by public employees.
David Cowen, deputy division chief for the International Monetary Fund's Asia and Pacific Department, met recently with the new securities regulator and urged its officials to work closely with the central National Bank of Cambodia.
He said the Commission would soon issue operational guidelines on securities firms. The IMF wants to see if those rules are consistent with banking laws and recognize the central National Bank of Cambodia's role as the nation's chief regulator.
(Reporting by Jason Szep; Editing by Megan Goldin)
**************
Source: REUTERS
By Jason Szep
PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Construction cranes and unfinished high-rise buildings surround the silty marshland where a year from now Cambodia hopes to turn the page on decades of upheaval by opening a stock exchange.
The idea of a Cambodian stockmarket has been floated since the 1990s but has struggled for traction in a country known for a culture of political impunity, chronic poverty and a history of violence, including the Khmer Rouge "Killing Fields."
But authorities argue those days are over and plan to sign a deal this month with World City Co Ltd, a South Korean-backed developer, to start building a $6 million, four-storey stock exchange on the waterfront of a new financial district.
"We want to do it next year," Mey Vann, director of the financial industry department at Cambodia's Ministry of Economy and Finance, said in an interview. "It'll be good timing for us with the economic recovery."
It was supposed to open in September, a target set last year when South Korea's stock exchange operator agreed with the Cambodian government to set up and run a joint stock exchange.
But the global financial crisis intervened, ending an unprecedented boom which saw Cambodia's economy expand 10 percent annually in the five years up to 2008. Foreign investment collapsed, tourist arrivals fell by double digits and garment exports, a mainstay of the economy, shrank by 15 percent.
In recent weeks, Cambodian officials have cautioned against moving too fast, in some cases questioning whether a country whose education system was decimated during Pol Pot's 1975-79 reign of terror is ready to invest in stocks.
"We've been waiting for a green light," said Intyo Lee, project director for Korea Exchange, Asia's fourth-largest bourse operator which will own 49 percent of the exchange and is recruiting and training workers for it. Cambodian will own the rest.
"We're pretty much ready," he added, "but many people say it's too early. The government is trying to build consensus."
STARTING SMALL
The exchange expects to start small with just four or five companies issuing about $10 million worth of shares each, said Lee. That's comparable to neighboring Vietnam's first stock market launched in 2000 with its initial market capitalization of $43 million. Today, Vietnam's market is worth $27 billion.
Yet there are risks to Cambodian investors. In Vietnam, most of the investors were local, often unaware of the risks, and many were burned as the market steered a rollercoaster course. Meanwhile, foreign investors largely sought to dip into the potential high returns of an emerging frontier market while hedging their bets with a highly diversified portfolio.
Like its communist neighbor, Cambodia is giving privatizing state companies priority with a place to sell stock. The Finance Ministry has asked three state-owned companies to list shares: Telecom Cambodia, port operator Sihanoukville Autonomous Port and the Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority.
Some of those companies have a simple question: why do it?
"We don't have any financial constraints. I don't understand the reasons we are going to be listed," said Ek Sonn Chan, who runs the Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority, which employs about 600 people, has about $200 million in assets and generates about $25 million in annual revenue. He said the company is profitable.
"If we become a public company, maybe we are more responsible, more transparent and maybe we can help the government allocate financial support to our company. But in the meantime, we don't know much about how it happens. It's very new to Cambodia, very new to me," he said.
Others say the timing may not be right for some time. Foreign direct investment nearly halved to an estimated $490 million from $815 million in 2008, according to the International Monetary Fund, which expects Cambodia's economy to shrink nearly 3 percent this year before growing about 4 percent next year.
Most of the disappearing capital had flowed into construction projects, including a $2 billion satellite city on the outskirts of the capital Phnom Penh where the exchange will be built.
Developed by South Korean-backed World City, the two-year-old project known as Camko City aims to create a new financial district by 2018 spread over 125 hectares, complete with glass-walled office towers for stockbrokers, upmarket apartments, securities regulator offices and sleek retail spaces.
But construction has slowed, said Kim Duk-kon, a vice president at World City. Although the first phase is nearly complete with many of the residential villas built and sold, subsequent phases are on hold after capital dried up.
FLOODED SWAMPLAND
The area where the stock exchange will be built is flooded swampland on the edge of Boeung Kak Lake in the heart of the city. The Finance Ministry said the end of the rainy season this month will allow workers to begin building the exchange on the corner of what developers are calling Phnom Penh Boulevard.
Cambodian officials rejected an initial design, saying the exchange's exterior was too modern and not Cambodian enough. It has since been redesigned using traditional Khmer accents.
Vann at the Finance Ministry and Kim said a news conference this month will announce construction of the exchange. A new Securities and Exchange Commission of Cambodia, he added, is drafting market regulations that will be issued soon.
"We have a very good team at the Securities and Exchange Commission. They graduated from overseas. They are new blood in terms of enforcement of the law," he said. "Our law is very strict in terms of speculation."
Some observers are unconvinced and say authorities need to demonstrate how investors will be protected in a country with a reputation for corruption at nearly every level of the bureaucracy. Some fear speculative gambling by public employees.
David Cowen, deputy division chief for the International Monetary Fund's Asia and Pacific Department, met recently with the new securities regulator and urged its officials to work closely with the central National Bank of Cambodia.
He said the Commission would soon issue operational guidelines on securities firms. The IMF wants to see if those rules are consistent with banking laws and recognize the central National Bank of Cambodia's role as the nation's chief regulator.
(Reporting by Jason Szep; Editing by Megan Goldin)
**************
Source: REUTERS
Typhoon Ketsana does damage in Laos
October 5, 2009 12:12:10
Typhoon Ketsana has torn across the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, killing hundreds of people.
In Laos, the storm killed at least 24 people. The floods meant that until two days ago, the worst-hit Attapeu region could only be reached by helicopter and boat. The United Nations World Food Programme says canned fish and rice have now been delivered to storm survivors.
MAKIN: The World Food Programme has an office in Attapeu which is on the border with Vietnam and Cambodia down in the south, right in the south of Laos.
LAM: Yes and what's the devastation there like, how are the people coping?
MAKIN: Many people lost everything, two districts already suffered some floods in late July and we were going in to offer assistance for this flood and when they were struck again. Phouvong is already... and Sanxay - two of our poorest districts in all of Laos and these were affected. People lost about, we think 90 per cent of their crops, and it's coming up to harvest season. So in the next few months we're going to face real problems, real food shortages. Two districts are still accessible only by helicopter and we're not able to get out to all of the villages here. So we're simply working with the government, the Lao government and the army to helicopter food into the driest place and we'll coordinate villages to come and collect food from there. In the other districts we're getting trucks and boats, and the army are really helping coordinate a big effort here.
LAM: And Cait before the disaster hit what sort of a town or area was Attapeu? Was it a largely agricultural rural area?
MAKIN: It's quite rural; it's not as densely populated as other provinces in Laos. But I'm speaking to you from Samakkhixay, which is the capital, but we were all affected. But it is mainly rural and subsistence farming. There is a Vietnamese community, a large Vietnamese community which many small businesses were damaged and completely destroyed.
LAM: And as you look around you are large parts of the region still submerged, under water?
MAKIN: It's hard for us to tell. Yesterday I travelled by helicopter to Sanamxay and certainly there are parts [flooded]. It's very hard to get information. Helicopters are going to the worst areas and landing in the dry places and then we're relying on the government there to go to the more difficult places. So there are probably parts that are submerged. We had a little bit more strong rain last night which may have had some impact. For Samakkhixay where we are the water has receded and so we have about three districts that we can access.
LAM: What news have you of the capital Vientiane? Was Vientiane hit at all?
MAKIN: No as far as I'm aware it's been concentrated in the south. It came through Vietnam. We expected it to go up to the central regions in Khammouan and Savannakhet. There is someone in Savannakhet making assessment, but for now Attapeu is the worst hit with still quite serious in Xekong and Salavan also, which are the neighbouring districts, provinces to Attapeu.
*****************
Source: ABC Radio Australia
Typhoon Ketsana has torn across the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, killing hundreds of people.
In Laos, the storm killed at least 24 people. The floods meant that until two days ago, the worst-hit Attapeu region could only be reached by helicopter and boat. The United Nations World Food Programme says canned fish and rice have now been delivered to storm survivors.
MAKIN: The World Food Programme has an office in Attapeu which is on the border with Vietnam and Cambodia down in the south, right in the south of Laos.
LAM: Yes and what's the devastation there like, how are the people coping?
MAKIN: Many people lost everything, two districts already suffered some floods in late July and we were going in to offer assistance for this flood and when they were struck again. Phouvong is already... and Sanxay - two of our poorest districts in all of Laos and these were affected. People lost about, we think 90 per cent of their crops, and it's coming up to harvest season. So in the next few months we're going to face real problems, real food shortages. Two districts are still accessible only by helicopter and we're not able to get out to all of the villages here. So we're simply working with the government, the Lao government and the army to helicopter food into the driest place and we'll coordinate villages to come and collect food from there. In the other districts we're getting trucks and boats, and the army are really helping coordinate a big effort here.
LAM: And Cait before the disaster hit what sort of a town or area was Attapeu? Was it a largely agricultural rural area?
MAKIN: It's quite rural; it's not as densely populated as other provinces in Laos. But I'm speaking to you from Samakkhixay, which is the capital, but we were all affected. But it is mainly rural and subsistence farming. There is a Vietnamese community, a large Vietnamese community which many small businesses were damaged and completely destroyed.
LAM: And as you look around you are large parts of the region still submerged, under water?
MAKIN: It's hard for us to tell. Yesterday I travelled by helicopter to Sanamxay and certainly there are parts [flooded]. It's very hard to get information. Helicopters are going to the worst areas and landing in the dry places and then we're relying on the government there to go to the more difficult places. So there are probably parts that are submerged. We had a little bit more strong rain last night which may have had some impact. For Samakkhixay where we are the water has receded and so we have about three districts that we can access.
LAM: What news have you of the capital Vientiane? Was Vientiane hit at all?
MAKIN: No as far as I'm aware it's been concentrated in the south. It came through Vietnam. We expected it to go up to the central regions in Khammouan and Savannakhet. There is someone in Savannakhet making assessment, but for now Attapeu is the worst hit with still quite serious in Xekong and Salavan also, which are the neighbouring districts, provinces to Attapeu.
*****************
Source: ABC Radio Australia
Laos gets more emergency aid
4 October 2009
HANOI - MORE emergency aid reached southern Laos on Sunday, aid workers said after Tropical Storm Ketsana left at least 24 people dead last week in one of Asia's poorest nations.
'They've already started going out and helping people, giving out water and food,' said Sally Sakulku, of British-based Health Unlimited, referring to her staff in hardest-hit Attapeu province. 'It's accessible now.'
After Ketsana hit on Wednesday, floodwaters left the rugged region reachable only by helicopter and boat until limited road access opened on Saturday.
Ms Sakulku said her teams expected to reach about 1,000 families on Sunday in Attapeu, which borders Cambodia. Some were still sheltering in schools but others have returned home, she said.
In adjacent Sekong province, also hard-hit, the relief agency CARE said it was delivering kettles to help people boil water, and was mobilising other resources.
'We are supplying medicines to the provincial government so that they are prepared, for example, if it comes to an outbreak of diarrhoea,' said Henry Braun, CARE's director for Laos.
He said more than 15,000 people in the province have been affected and 200 houses confirmed destroyed.
'However, there is still a lot of unknowns surrounding the situation, especially in the remote areas,' he said.
Canned fish and rice from the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has also been delivered to southern Laos by the government, WFP said.
Ketsana has brought devastation across Southeast Asia, first killing at least 293 people in the Philippines before striking Vietnam, where 162 died, and Cambodia where it claimed 17 lives. -- AFP
*************
Source: THE STRAITS TIME
HANOI - MORE emergency aid reached southern Laos on Sunday, aid workers said after Tropical Storm Ketsana left at least 24 people dead last week in one of Asia's poorest nations.
'They've already started going out and helping people, giving out water and food,' said Sally Sakulku, of British-based Health Unlimited, referring to her staff in hardest-hit Attapeu province. 'It's accessible now.'
After Ketsana hit on Wednesday, floodwaters left the rugged region reachable only by helicopter and boat until limited road access opened on Saturday.
Ms Sakulku said her teams expected to reach about 1,000 families on Sunday in Attapeu, which borders Cambodia. Some were still sheltering in schools but others have returned home, she said.
In adjacent Sekong province, also hard-hit, the relief agency CARE said it was delivering kettles to help people boil water, and was mobilising other resources.
'We are supplying medicines to the provincial government so that they are prepared, for example, if it comes to an outbreak of diarrhoea,' said Henry Braun, CARE's director for Laos.
He said more than 15,000 people in the province have been affected and 200 houses confirmed destroyed.
'However, there is still a lot of unknowns surrounding the situation, especially in the remote areas,' he said.
Canned fish and rice from the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has also been delivered to southern Laos by the government, WFP said.
Ketsana has brought devastation across Southeast Asia, first killing at least 293 people in the Philippines before striking Vietnam, where 162 died, and Cambodia where it claimed 17 lives. -- AFP
*************
Source: THE STRAITS TIME
Earthweek: Environmental news from around the globe
October 04, 2009 8:00 AM
UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE
Tropical cyclones
A tropical storm that later became Typhoon Ketsana killed at least 288 people and damaged the homes of 3 million as it triggered the worst flooding the northern Philippines has experienced in 40 years.
After devastating parts of Manila, Ketsana went on to hit other Southeast Asian countries, killing 99 in Vietnam, 14 in Cambodia and 16 in Laos.
• Typhoon Parma cut a path across the Philippines’ northern edge on Saturday, killing four people but sparing the capital, Manila, from a second flood disaster as the storm churned toward Taiwan.
Tens of thousands of Filipinos had evacuated their homes as the storm bore down on the main island of Luzon just eight days after an earlier tempest left Manila awash in floods that killed almost 300 people.
• Another typhoon, Melor, was churning in the Philippine Sea, 1,600 miles to the east, threatening the U.S. territory of the Northern Mariana Islands.
Penguin rebound
A species of penguin virtually wiped out on Macquarie Island more than 100 years ago has rebounded, to the delight of Australian wildlife experts.
The island, located between New Zealand and Antarctica, was teeming with king penguins when it was discovered in 1810.
But the birds were slaughtered for blubber oil over the next century to the point that only a small colony survived. The Australian Antarctic Survey says that hundreds of the birds now live in the area around Lusitania Bay.
It appears the population has grown to the point that the penguins have begun to look for new parts of the island to recolonize.
Pushing Earth’s limits
A team of the world’s most eminent environmental scientists published a warning that human activity has already pushed three of Earth’s nine biophysical boundaries to beyond the planet’s ability to self-regulate.
Writing in the journal Nature, the researchers attempt to set “acceptable” upper limits on man’s influence on such environmental conditions as climate, biodiversity, stratospheric ozone and chemical cycles like that of nitrogen.
They suggest that for some of those conditions, like the use of nitrogen in fertilizers and loading of atmospheric carbon dioxide, humankind may have already stepped outside the safety zone.
It’s feared we may have to backpedal quickly to avoid catastrophe. Human activities, most notably the growing reliance on fossil fuels and industrialized agriculture, have become so pervasive that they may trigger irreversible and abrupt environmental change by damaging the regulatory capacity of the planet, the group warned.
African famine looms
The severe drought that has parched much of East Africa this year continues to worsen while taking the lives of people, wildlife and livestock.
The charity Oxfam International has appealed for $15 million in emergency donations so it can provide 750,000 people with food assistance.
Paul Smith Lomas, Oxfam’s East Africa director, said that while the drought stretches from the Horn of Africa to Uganda, about 3.8 million Kenyans, a tenth of the population, now need emergency aid.
Climate change has caused the frequency of drought to increase from about once per decade to once every two or three years.
Indian drought
Indian weather officials said that a weak summer monsoon has created the country’s worst drought since 1972.
Scant precipitation has caused extensive damage to rice, sugar cane and groundnut crops, according to the Meteorological Department.
It added that depleted reservoirs behind hydropower stations threaten both electricity and irrigation shortages this winter.
Acorn hazard
Many New Englanders are being forced to dodge a bumper crop of acorns raining down across the region this autumn.
The nuts were unusually scarce last year, but millions of the hard-shelled bombs are now bopping joggers on the head, whacking gardeners’ backsides and cracking vehicle windshields.
“It hurt,” University of Massachusetts at Amherst professor Wesley Autio told the The Boston Globe. “You stand outside and you can hear acorns hitting everything — cars, metal roofs, and it makes a tremendous sound.”
But the region’s largest acorn crop in memory is also allowing squirrels and other nut hoarders to fatten up for what some believe will be a brutal winter.
A cool summer along with record snowfalls and rain earlier this year have helped the acorns bloom larger and in greater numbers this fall.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
*****************
Source: gazette.com
UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE
Tropical cyclones
A tropical storm that later became Typhoon Ketsana killed at least 288 people and damaged the homes of 3 million as it triggered the worst flooding the northern Philippines has experienced in 40 years.
After devastating parts of Manila, Ketsana went on to hit other Southeast Asian countries, killing 99 in Vietnam, 14 in Cambodia and 16 in Laos.
• Typhoon Parma cut a path across the Philippines’ northern edge on Saturday, killing four people but sparing the capital, Manila, from a second flood disaster as the storm churned toward Taiwan.
Tens of thousands of Filipinos had evacuated their homes as the storm bore down on the main island of Luzon just eight days after an earlier tempest left Manila awash in floods that killed almost 300 people.
• Another typhoon, Melor, was churning in the Philippine Sea, 1,600 miles to the east, threatening the U.S. territory of the Northern Mariana Islands.
Penguin rebound
A species of penguin virtually wiped out on Macquarie Island more than 100 years ago has rebounded, to the delight of Australian wildlife experts.
The island, located between New Zealand and Antarctica, was teeming with king penguins when it was discovered in 1810.
But the birds were slaughtered for blubber oil over the next century to the point that only a small colony survived. The Australian Antarctic Survey says that hundreds of the birds now live in the area around Lusitania Bay.
It appears the population has grown to the point that the penguins have begun to look for new parts of the island to recolonize.
Pushing Earth’s limits
A team of the world’s most eminent environmental scientists published a warning that human activity has already pushed three of Earth’s nine biophysical boundaries to beyond the planet’s ability to self-regulate.
Writing in the journal Nature, the researchers attempt to set “acceptable” upper limits on man’s influence on such environmental conditions as climate, biodiversity, stratospheric ozone and chemical cycles like that of nitrogen.
They suggest that for some of those conditions, like the use of nitrogen in fertilizers and loading of atmospheric carbon dioxide, humankind may have already stepped outside the safety zone.
It’s feared we may have to backpedal quickly to avoid catastrophe. Human activities, most notably the growing reliance on fossil fuels and industrialized agriculture, have become so pervasive that they may trigger irreversible and abrupt environmental change by damaging the regulatory capacity of the planet, the group warned.
African famine looms
The severe drought that has parched much of East Africa this year continues to worsen while taking the lives of people, wildlife and livestock.
The charity Oxfam International has appealed for $15 million in emergency donations so it can provide 750,000 people with food assistance.
Paul Smith Lomas, Oxfam’s East Africa director, said that while the drought stretches from the Horn of Africa to Uganda, about 3.8 million Kenyans, a tenth of the population, now need emergency aid.
Climate change has caused the frequency of drought to increase from about once per decade to once every two or three years.
Indian drought
Indian weather officials said that a weak summer monsoon has created the country’s worst drought since 1972.
Scant precipitation has caused extensive damage to rice, sugar cane and groundnut crops, according to the Meteorological Department.
It added that depleted reservoirs behind hydropower stations threaten both electricity and irrigation shortages this winter.
Acorn hazard
Many New Englanders are being forced to dodge a bumper crop of acorns raining down across the region this autumn.
The nuts were unusually scarce last year, but millions of the hard-shelled bombs are now bopping joggers on the head, whacking gardeners’ backsides and cracking vehicle windshields.
“It hurt,” University of Massachusetts at Amherst professor Wesley Autio told the The Boston Globe. “You stand outside and you can hear acorns hitting everything — cars, metal roofs, and it makes a tremendous sound.”
But the region’s largest acorn crop in memory is also allowing squirrels and other nut hoarders to fatten up for what some believe will be a brutal winter.
A cool summer along with record snowfalls and rain earlier this year have helped the acorns bloom larger and in greater numbers this fall.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
*****************
Source: gazette.com
Myanmar minister promises 'free and fair' elections
3 October 2009
Siem Reap (Cambodia): Myanmar's foreign minister promised on Saturday his country would hold "free and fair" elections next year, despite the detention of democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi.
"In my country free and fair elections will be held. We have already announced it," Myanmar foreign minister Nyan Win told reporters after a meeting with counterparts in Cambodia's northwestern tourist hub.
"(Whether) the elections are free and fair or not, so far no one can judge it. After the elections will be held, you can judge whether the elections are free and fair or not."
A Myanmar court Friday rejected an appeal by Suu Kyi against her conviction over an incident in which a US man swam uninvited to her home in May, earning her an extra 18 months' detention.
The sentence sidelines her from the elections promised for 2010, leading critics to say the polls are a sham. The minister made the remarks after meeting with the foreign ministers of Japan, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam for talks intended to foster development within the Mekong region.
Myanmar has been under military rule since 1962, and the junta refused to acknowledge the landslide win of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party in the last elections in 1990.
Bureau Report
**********
Source: Zeenews.com
Siem Reap (Cambodia): Myanmar's foreign minister promised on Saturday his country would hold "free and fair" elections next year, despite the detention of democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi.
"In my country free and fair elections will be held. We have already announced it," Myanmar foreign minister Nyan Win told reporters after a meeting with counterparts in Cambodia's northwestern tourist hub.
"(Whether) the elections are free and fair or not, so far no one can judge it. After the elections will be held, you can judge whether the elections are free and fair or not."
A Myanmar court Friday rejected an appeal by Suu Kyi against her conviction over an incident in which a US man swam uninvited to her home in May, earning her an extra 18 months' detention.
The sentence sidelines her from the elections promised for 2010, leading critics to say the polls are a sham. The minister made the remarks after meeting with the foreign ministers of Japan, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam for talks intended to foster development within the Mekong region.
Myanmar has been under military rule since 1962, and the junta refused to acknowledge the landslide win of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party in the last elections in 1990.
Bureau Report
**********
Source: Zeenews.com
Cambodia’s Displaced: Can Canada Make a Difference?
3 October 2009
As farmers and city dwellers are uprooted by developments, advocates call on CIDA to rise to their defence.
By Jared Ferrie, Yesterday, TheTyee.ca
(Post by CAAI News Media)
As far back as their history goes, the Bunong lived semi-nomadic lives, cultivating small plots of land for a couple years at a time before moving on to allow the soil to regenerate. That came to an end when the United States began carrying out its secret bombing of Cambodia in 1969.
"We fled to Vietnam and we lived in camps there," recalled Prap Tuch, an elderly member of the Bunong ethnic minority.
His people stayed and escaped the horror that was to follow -- the Khmer Rouge regime, which killed as many as two million Cambodians between 1975 and 1979. The Bunong finally returned to their mountainous homeland in 1986.
But they now face a new threat to their way of life.
Cambodia's government has been granting concessions to companies eager to extract the country's natural resources. Land occupied by the Bunong is being cleared to make way for rubber plantations run by Socfin, a subsidiary of the French conglomerate Bollore Group, in partnership with a Cambodian company, KCD.
Prap is just one of an estimated 150,000 Cambodians threatened with forced eviction throughout the country, according to Amnesty International. A real estate boom in the capital, Phnom Penh, has seen thousands displaced -- illegally, say land law experts -- to make way for property developments. The government recently pulled out of a World Bank financed program that aimed to halt forced evictions by sorting out land title in rural areas.
Advocates for the Bunong and other displaced groups say Canada could be an influential voice on their behalf because the Canadian International Development Agency is donor and technical advisor to the Cambodian government's land reform program.
But as more and more Cambodians are forced from their homes, Canada's response so far has been official silence.
'Three unacceptable options'
The Bunong have been offered three options: compensation, relocation or the opportunity to produce rubber on small, family-run plantations.
Prap said none of them were particularly attractive. He would prefer to produce some rubber to sell to the company while still maintaining land that would allow him to farm his traditional crops of rice, fruits and vegetables.
"I don't refuse development. We need to live as other people," he said. "But if we lose the fields, we lose our culture."
Furthermore, he said, his land has not been measured in order to assess compensation, even though he has been forced out to make way for a rubber plantation.
"Allowing people to choose between three unacceptable options for compensation is not meaningful consultation," said David Pred, country director of Bridges Across Borders, which advocates on land rights issues. "The company should start by listening to the affected communities and understanding what their needs and development aspirations are."
Phillip Monnin, who heads Socfin's operations here, did not respond to an e-mailed request for comment.
'Maybe... some errors'
Eric Beugnot, Cambodia director of the French Development Agency (AFD), said Socfin has launched a study to determine the social and environmental impacts of the plantation.
"They recognized maybe they have made some errors, some mistakes," he said. "They included in the study what has been done and eventually corrective action."
AFD is evaluating a $2.5 million plan to help "smallholders." The project would encourage the company to integrate more family-run rubber plantations into its overall operation.
"That could serve as a model for economic concessions," said Beugnot, adding that the company has no obligation to pursue such a model; it could just as easily develop its concession as a private rubber plantation.
'Laws ignored'
Daniel King, a lawyer with the Community Legal Education Centre (CLEC), said the Socfin-KCD deal is murky, and information provided to the community is often conflicting.
"The actual clearing of land by Socfin-KCD has not always corresponded to this information," he said.
In fact, he said, the deal may be illegal under Cambodian law, which requires an Environmental and Social Impact Assessment prior to granting an economic land concession (ELC). Copies of those assessments have been requested from the relevant ministries, but have not been provided.
"They may not have been conducted prior to the granting of the ELC or the clearing of land," he said.
King was also skeptical of the French Development Agency's role, suggesting the danger of French taxpayer dollars being used to fund the "social aspects" of an illegal land deal.
"Its partnership with Socfin-KCD in that endeavour could be seen as supporting an ELC that is likely to be illegal under national and international human rights law," he said.
Beugnot said the feasibility study, which AFD requires if it is to provide funding to Socfin-KCD, began weeks ago and will take three months to complete.
In the meantime, those affected by the land concession have few options. On June 19, members of the Bunong held traditional ceremonies to appease ancestral spirits for the loss of forest they consider sacred, and to curse the rubber companies.
Recently, out of desperation, Prap travelled to Phnom Penh with other members of his community to raise awareness of their plight.
"I don't know how to get the land back. Now I just stay and wait and maybe my family will starve," he said.
Decades of displacement
Cambodia has seen years of massive displacement beginning with Richard Nixon's bombing campaign, which he authorized in secret without consent of Congress. In an attempt to disrupt North Vietnamese supply lines along the border with Vietnam, the U.S. dropped an estimated 540,000 tons of bombs on Cambodia in four years, which strengthened support for Khmer Rouge rebels. The bombs killed as many as 500,000 people and displaced about 30 per cent of the population.
Millions more fled the countryside in the following years as a civil war raged between U.S.-backed government troops and the Khmer Rouge. When the Khmer Rouge took over in 1975, they emptied Phnom Penh of almost all of its inhabitants, forcing them and millions of others throughout the country into labour camps. After Vietnamese and Cambodian forces ousted the regime in 1979, refugees flooded back into the capital seeking shelter wherever they could find it.
Still more Cambodians languished in camps in Thailand as Cambodian and Vietnamese troops battled the remnants of the Khmer Rouge and other armed groups. The remaining Khmer Rouge were finally defeated in 1998 and refugees returned.
New era, same problem
Decades of forced migration have resulted in a tangled web of land ownership claims. In an attempt to address the issue, the government passed a law in 2001 stating that those who had occupied a piece of land continuously for at least five years could claim legal title. But Cambodian courts, which critics say are notoriously corrupt, have rarely enforced that law.
Instead of bombs, bullets and landmines, Cambodians are now forced from their homes by powerful economic interests.
In Phnom Penh, property prices shot up 100 per cent in 2007, according to a report by the International Monetary Fund. Government officials and other elites have cashed in on the boom, along with international investors, pushing people from their homes in order to develop the land. A local organization, STT, estimates that 11 per cent of the capital's population has been forcibly relocated since 1991, with major evictions still planned. In rural areas, corrupt officials also partner with international investors to exploit natural resources, often forcing people off land that they have a strong legal claim to.
Land reform program scrapped
On Sept. 4, the Cambodian government terminated World Bank financing for the Land Management and Administration Project (LMAP), which has issued 1.1 million land titles in rural areas since 2002.
During a speech on Sept. 7, Cambodia's prime minister, Hun Sen, said cooperating with the World Bank on the program "was difficult because it was complicated and had too many conditions."
The move came after the World Bank, under pressure from advocacy groups, issued critical statements about LMAP and forced evictions.
A July 13 World Bank review of LMAP stated: "procedures for state land classification... were only partly implemented." The bank also noted "a particular disconnect between institutional, legal and policy achievements and insecurity of land tenure for the poor, especially in urban areas, and indigenous peoples."
In plain language, the bank meant that working with government officials to devise elaborate systems for assigning land ownership has not prevented land grabbing, despite whatever laws or regulations are put in place.
Or as Pred, of Bridges Across Borders, put it: "Donors to Cambodia's land sector have tried to provide technical solutions to political problems... powerful people are able to grab the land of the poor and vulnerable majority with total impunity"
Yet, a World Bank spokesman in Phnom Penh downplayed the government's decision, noting its promise to continue the process on its own.
"The World Bank welcomes the government's commitments to continue its reforms of the land sector," said Bou Saroeun.
Pred expressed no confidence in the government's promises.
"State land has been totally mismanaged by the Cambodian government even with World Bank and other donor involvement," he said.
Canada's role
Along with the World Bank, LMAP was supported by Canada, Finland and Germany. The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) is also co-facilitator, along with the Cambodian government, on the Technical Working Group on Land and it holds a seat in the Ministry of Lands.
Critics have been urging Canada to use its leverage as a donor country to do more to stop the illegal expropriation of land.
"CIDA has so far been unwilling to challenge the status quo in order to address the real problems with land in Cambodia," said Pred. "Unless they do so, in a coordinated manner with other donors, there will be little return from the investments of its aid dollars."
Ironically, Pred noted, when donors refuse to stand up to governments that break their own laws, "the aid runs the risk of legitimizing the system."
CIDA's representative in Cambodia said she was not authorized to speak to reporters and directed questions to CIDA's media department in Canada, which did not respond to e-mailed questions.
On July 2, a group of 11 donors and aid agencies issued a statement calling on the government to halt forced evictions "until a fair and transparent mechanism for resolving land disputes is put in place."
The signatories included the World Bank and the United Nations, along with embassies including those of Britain, the U.S. and Australia.
"The Canadian International Development Agency, which has a seat in the Ministry of Lands, was conspicuously absent from that statement," said Daniel King the CLEC lawyer, "If I was a Canadian I'd be asking questions.
****************
Source: Khmer Love Khmer
As farmers and city dwellers are uprooted by developments, advocates call on CIDA to rise to their defence.
By Jared Ferrie, Yesterday, TheTyee.ca
(Post by CAAI News Media)
As far back as their history goes, the Bunong lived semi-nomadic lives, cultivating small plots of land for a couple years at a time before moving on to allow the soil to regenerate. That came to an end when the United States began carrying out its secret bombing of Cambodia in 1969.
"We fled to Vietnam and we lived in camps there," recalled Prap Tuch, an elderly member of the Bunong ethnic minority.
His people stayed and escaped the horror that was to follow -- the Khmer Rouge regime, which killed as many as two million Cambodians between 1975 and 1979. The Bunong finally returned to their mountainous homeland in 1986.
But they now face a new threat to their way of life.
Cambodia's government has been granting concessions to companies eager to extract the country's natural resources. Land occupied by the Bunong is being cleared to make way for rubber plantations run by Socfin, a subsidiary of the French conglomerate Bollore Group, in partnership with a Cambodian company, KCD.
Prap is just one of an estimated 150,000 Cambodians threatened with forced eviction throughout the country, according to Amnesty International. A real estate boom in the capital, Phnom Penh, has seen thousands displaced -- illegally, say land law experts -- to make way for property developments. The government recently pulled out of a World Bank financed program that aimed to halt forced evictions by sorting out land title in rural areas.
Advocates for the Bunong and other displaced groups say Canada could be an influential voice on their behalf because the Canadian International Development Agency is donor and technical advisor to the Cambodian government's land reform program.
But as more and more Cambodians are forced from their homes, Canada's response so far has been official silence.
'Three unacceptable options'
The Bunong have been offered three options: compensation, relocation or the opportunity to produce rubber on small, family-run plantations.
Prap said none of them were particularly attractive. He would prefer to produce some rubber to sell to the company while still maintaining land that would allow him to farm his traditional crops of rice, fruits and vegetables.
"I don't refuse development. We need to live as other people," he said. "But if we lose the fields, we lose our culture."
Furthermore, he said, his land has not been measured in order to assess compensation, even though he has been forced out to make way for a rubber plantation.
"Allowing people to choose between three unacceptable options for compensation is not meaningful consultation," said David Pred, country director of Bridges Across Borders, which advocates on land rights issues. "The company should start by listening to the affected communities and understanding what their needs and development aspirations are."
Phillip Monnin, who heads Socfin's operations here, did not respond to an e-mailed request for comment.
'Maybe... some errors'
Eric Beugnot, Cambodia director of the French Development Agency (AFD), said Socfin has launched a study to determine the social and environmental impacts of the plantation.
"They recognized maybe they have made some errors, some mistakes," he said. "They included in the study what has been done and eventually corrective action."
AFD is evaluating a $2.5 million plan to help "smallholders." The project would encourage the company to integrate more family-run rubber plantations into its overall operation.
"That could serve as a model for economic concessions," said Beugnot, adding that the company has no obligation to pursue such a model; it could just as easily develop its concession as a private rubber plantation.
'Laws ignored'
Daniel King, a lawyer with the Community Legal Education Centre (CLEC), said the Socfin-KCD deal is murky, and information provided to the community is often conflicting.
"The actual clearing of land by Socfin-KCD has not always corresponded to this information," he said.
In fact, he said, the deal may be illegal under Cambodian law, which requires an Environmental and Social Impact Assessment prior to granting an economic land concession (ELC). Copies of those assessments have been requested from the relevant ministries, but have not been provided.
"They may not have been conducted prior to the granting of the ELC or the clearing of land," he said.
King was also skeptical of the French Development Agency's role, suggesting the danger of French taxpayer dollars being used to fund the "social aspects" of an illegal land deal.
"Its partnership with Socfin-KCD in that endeavour could be seen as supporting an ELC that is likely to be illegal under national and international human rights law," he said.
Beugnot said the feasibility study, which AFD requires if it is to provide funding to Socfin-KCD, began weeks ago and will take three months to complete.
In the meantime, those affected by the land concession have few options. On June 19, members of the Bunong held traditional ceremonies to appease ancestral spirits for the loss of forest they consider sacred, and to curse the rubber companies.
Recently, out of desperation, Prap travelled to Phnom Penh with other members of his community to raise awareness of their plight.
"I don't know how to get the land back. Now I just stay and wait and maybe my family will starve," he said.
Decades of displacement
Cambodia has seen years of massive displacement beginning with Richard Nixon's bombing campaign, which he authorized in secret without consent of Congress. In an attempt to disrupt North Vietnamese supply lines along the border with Vietnam, the U.S. dropped an estimated 540,000 tons of bombs on Cambodia in four years, which strengthened support for Khmer Rouge rebels. The bombs killed as many as 500,000 people and displaced about 30 per cent of the population.
Millions more fled the countryside in the following years as a civil war raged between U.S.-backed government troops and the Khmer Rouge. When the Khmer Rouge took over in 1975, they emptied Phnom Penh of almost all of its inhabitants, forcing them and millions of others throughout the country into labour camps. After Vietnamese and Cambodian forces ousted the regime in 1979, refugees flooded back into the capital seeking shelter wherever they could find it.
Still more Cambodians languished in camps in Thailand as Cambodian and Vietnamese troops battled the remnants of the Khmer Rouge and other armed groups. The remaining Khmer Rouge were finally defeated in 1998 and refugees returned.
New era, same problem
Decades of forced migration have resulted in a tangled web of land ownership claims. In an attempt to address the issue, the government passed a law in 2001 stating that those who had occupied a piece of land continuously for at least five years could claim legal title. But Cambodian courts, which critics say are notoriously corrupt, have rarely enforced that law.
Instead of bombs, bullets and landmines, Cambodians are now forced from their homes by powerful economic interests.
In Phnom Penh, property prices shot up 100 per cent in 2007, according to a report by the International Monetary Fund. Government officials and other elites have cashed in on the boom, along with international investors, pushing people from their homes in order to develop the land. A local organization, STT, estimates that 11 per cent of the capital's population has been forcibly relocated since 1991, with major evictions still planned. In rural areas, corrupt officials also partner with international investors to exploit natural resources, often forcing people off land that they have a strong legal claim to.
Land reform program scrapped
On Sept. 4, the Cambodian government terminated World Bank financing for the Land Management and Administration Project (LMAP), which has issued 1.1 million land titles in rural areas since 2002.
During a speech on Sept. 7, Cambodia's prime minister, Hun Sen, said cooperating with the World Bank on the program "was difficult because it was complicated and had too many conditions."
The move came after the World Bank, under pressure from advocacy groups, issued critical statements about LMAP and forced evictions.
A July 13 World Bank review of LMAP stated: "procedures for state land classification... were only partly implemented." The bank also noted "a particular disconnect between institutional, legal and policy achievements and insecurity of land tenure for the poor, especially in urban areas, and indigenous peoples."
In plain language, the bank meant that working with government officials to devise elaborate systems for assigning land ownership has not prevented land grabbing, despite whatever laws or regulations are put in place.
Or as Pred, of Bridges Across Borders, put it: "Donors to Cambodia's land sector have tried to provide technical solutions to political problems... powerful people are able to grab the land of the poor and vulnerable majority with total impunity"
Yet, a World Bank spokesman in Phnom Penh downplayed the government's decision, noting its promise to continue the process on its own.
"The World Bank welcomes the government's commitments to continue its reforms of the land sector," said Bou Saroeun.
Pred expressed no confidence in the government's promises.
"State land has been totally mismanaged by the Cambodian government even with World Bank and other donor involvement," he said.
Canada's role
Along with the World Bank, LMAP was supported by Canada, Finland and Germany. The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) is also co-facilitator, along with the Cambodian government, on the Technical Working Group on Land and it holds a seat in the Ministry of Lands.
Critics have been urging Canada to use its leverage as a donor country to do more to stop the illegal expropriation of land.
"CIDA has so far been unwilling to challenge the status quo in order to address the real problems with land in Cambodia," said Pred. "Unless they do so, in a coordinated manner with other donors, there will be little return from the investments of its aid dollars."
Ironically, Pred noted, when donors refuse to stand up to governments that break their own laws, "the aid runs the risk of legitimizing the system."
CIDA's representative in Cambodia said she was not authorized to speak to reporters and directed questions to CIDA's media department in Canada, which did not respond to e-mailed questions.
On July 2, a group of 11 donors and aid agencies issued a statement calling on the government to halt forced evictions "until a fair and transparent mechanism for resolving land disputes is put in place."
The signatories included the World Bank and the United Nations, along with embassies including those of Britain, the U.S. and Australia.
"The Canadian International Development Agency, which has a seat in the Ministry of Lands, was conspicuously absent from that statement," said Daniel King the CLEC lawyer, "If I was a Canadian I'd be asking questions.
****************
Source: Khmer Love Khmer
Cambodian FM calls on strengthening partnership for development of Mekong basin
2009-10-03 12:53:49
SIEM REAP, Cambodia, Oct. 3 (Xinhua) -- The second foreign ministerial meeting among five Mekong countries and Japan kicked off Saturday in Siem Reap province, northern part of Cambodia, aimed to boost joint development effort in the area.
As the meeting started, Cambodia's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Hor Namhong, who chaired the one-day meeting session said "Our gathering here today constitutes a step further in the realization of our partnership for the development of the Mekong basin, which would certainly yield great benefit for the peoples living along the Mekong River and Japan as well."
The agenda for the second Mekong-Japan Foreign Ministers' Meeting is to review progress made since the first meeting in Tokyo, Japan in January 2008.
Hor Namhong also said that "The cooperation between the Mekong region and Japan is bound to have major implications for the future development of the Mekong basin." He highly appreciates Japan's commitment to provide more Official Development Assistance (ODA) to Asia, saying that this initiative "would not only strengthen Asia's growth potential, but also contribute to ASEAN integration."
The meeting attended by foreign ministers from Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Japan, Vietnam was represented by a deputy foreign minister attended the meeting.
Mekong-Japan Partnership Program was launched in 2007 for the sake of peace, development and prosperity in the Mekong sub-region.
According to the program of discussion, the foreign ministers will not only discuss the development programs, but also to exchange views on regional and global issues of common concern.
*************
Source: China View
SIEM REAP, Cambodia, Oct. 3 (Xinhua) -- The second foreign ministerial meeting among five Mekong countries and Japan kicked off Saturday in Siem Reap province, northern part of Cambodia, aimed to boost joint development effort in the area.
As the meeting started, Cambodia's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Hor Namhong, who chaired the one-day meeting session said "Our gathering here today constitutes a step further in the realization of our partnership for the development of the Mekong basin, which would certainly yield great benefit for the peoples living along the Mekong River and Japan as well."
The agenda for the second Mekong-Japan Foreign Ministers' Meeting is to review progress made since the first meeting in Tokyo, Japan in January 2008.
Hor Namhong also said that "The cooperation between the Mekong region and Japan is bound to have major implications for the future development of the Mekong basin." He highly appreciates Japan's commitment to provide more Official Development Assistance (ODA) to Asia, saying that this initiative "would not only strengthen Asia's growth potential, but also contribute to ASEAN integration."
The meeting attended by foreign ministers from Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Japan, Vietnam was represented by a deputy foreign minister attended the meeting.
Mekong-Japan Partnership Program was launched in 2007 for the sake of peace, development and prosperity in the Mekong sub-region.
According to the program of discussion, the foreign ministers will not only discuss the development programs, but also to exchange views on regional and global issues of common concern.
*************
Source: China View
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