Since 2020, at least five companies have been granted mining concessions in land designated as a community protected area adjoining Cambodia’s Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary.Satellite analysis and on-the-ground reporting reveal that marble extraction has been underway since 2021, with companies piling up and shipping out thousands of blocks of marble, leaving behind cleared forests and water-filled pits.Government officials and mining companies did not respond to interview requests, but local residents and community chiefs say they have not been consulted, or been given adequate compensation, as quarries tore through land in the community zone.Lumphat sanctuary is also under pressure from industrial agriculture and a planned hydropower development.
In Sre Chhuk village, a quiet patch in northeast Cambodia where the Mekong’s smaller veins trace the edge of a fading wildlife sanctuary, Vorn Pang and Sao Thorn once believed their land was safe.
By 2018, officials and conservation groups had formalized their farmland as part of the Veal Kambor Community Protected Area (CPA), under a conservation model that aims to balance local livelihoods and forest protection. In return for patrolling and managing the adjoining forests of the Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary, villagers retained rights to manage resources in a nearly 3,000-hectare (7,413-acre) “community zone” for 15 years.
