A Cambodian journalist, Hang Serei Oudom, who wrote a number of stories uncovering forest crimes linked to businessmen and powerful officials has been found murdered in his car. Cambodia’s forest cover has dropped from 73 to 57% between 1990 and 2010 according to the UN. His murder follows that of prominent local environmentalist, Chhuth Vuthy. In the last story before his death, Oudom accused the son of a military police commander of smuggling logs in military-plated vehicles and extorting money from people who were legally transporting wood.

The Global Canopy Program is promoting the use of smartphones by indigenous communities to protect their forests. The strategy would see smartphone apps used to collect geographic data and photographs. This local data would then be linked to remote sensing data to enhance the monitoring of forest management. Up until now the effectiveness of community forest management projects in halting deforestation has been brought into question. The hope is that smartphones would play a significant role in helping local communities to manage their forests though there are some concerns that this would reduce the role of communities to simply collecting data without having input using their local knowledge on how their forests should be managed.

A coalition of 21 NGOs from nine countries are calling on the UN to impose sanctions on Malaysia for breaching its obligations under international anti-corruption and anti-money-laundering treaties. They allege that Malaysian authorities are protecting Sarawak Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud from prosecution. The Chief Minister is linked by the NGOs to large scale destruction of Malaysia’s tropical rainforests by logging.

Washington-based NGO Rights and Resources Initiative have published a report claiming that there is a vital link between forest dwellers having rights over their land and preventing deforestation. It points to examples in China, India and Brazil where locals have had a say over how their forests are managed. Conservation groups are hoping to get land rights firmly on the agenda at the Rio 20+. The summit takes place on 20-22 June and will discuss poverty reduction, advancement of social equity and environmental protection.

According to an Indonesian weekly news magazine the Ministry of Environment is preparing a civil suit against fourteen pulp and paper companies – twelve linked with APP and two with APRIL – for illegally clearing forests on Sumatra. The value of the timber only represents four per cent of the damages being claimed, the balance is for ‘ecological losses’. The Ministry of Forestry is opposing the lawsuit.

Major amendments to Brazil’s Forest Code are on the brink of passing into law. The changes allow reserve areas in the Amazon to be reduced from 80 to 50% and reduce the restriction on forest clearance near rivers. Agriculturalists have welcomed the amendments.

Letter from Purwadi Soeprihanto, Executive Director, Association of Indonesian Forest Concessionaires
Published on the Chatham House Illegal Logging website this letter draws attention to the new certification system for Indonesia’s timber sector called SVLK (or TLAS using the English acronym). It is intended to address the requirements of the EUTR, which comes into force in March 2013, by providing assurance that Indonesian wood products are produced in a legal and sustainable manner.