Helping Cambodia's monks to save forests

In the far northwest of Cambodia, the Province of Oddar Meanchey sits next to the border with Thailand and was the last holdout of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge. With the end of the conflict in the mid-1990s many Cambodian refugees moved to the area in search of land. They found a heavily underdeveloped area of forests and a lot of landmines.

A combination of illegal logging and clearance for agriculture had two consequences – a great many landmine accidents and the rapid deforestation of the countryside. The HALO Trust has been working here since 1993 clearing mines and making the land safe for people to rebuild their lives. Now we have begun to work with a unique local community to safeguard the remaining forests as well as the people who live there.

The Monk's Community Forest was established in 2001 by the Buddhist monks of the Samraong Pagoda who acquired legal protections for 45,000 acres of State-owned land – equivalent to 34,000 American football fields. They established patrols to prevent logging and worked with local people to allow traditional low-impact farming and foraging. The monks pioneered a method of conservation that linked protection of the forest to traditional beliefs.

Tho Thoross is one of the monks who currently leads the community venture. He said: "There was too much pressure from people wanting to claim land for logging, growing cassava and to build homes. There were also companies transporting tropical hardwood to Vietnam and China illegally. It was very valuable.

In 2012 we won the Equator Prize in America, which has made the forest globally recognised and helps us to protect it. We allow one per cent of the forest for local villagers to grow mushrooms and other agriculture. But we work with HALO to construct biogas digesters to local people so that they can cook without needing to collect firewood."

HALO's biogas digester – a means of creating cooking gas from composting waste – was begun as a pilot project in partnership with ActionAid in 2023 for families in eight villages near the forest.

HALO is also helping make safe any landmines or explosive devices found in the Monk's Forest as they develop it into a sustainable tourism destination with a campsite and café. 

"This area saw the last fighting between the Vietnamese and the Khmer Rouge and we know there must be mines because we hear them explode when there are fires. HALO has cleared the roads to allow people to reach us and now are clearing mines in the forest. Tourism is important because it can provide jobs for local people so removing the mines is key."