Overlapping zones of exclusion: carbon markets, corporate hydropower enclaves and timber extraction in Cambodia

Figures & data

Figure 1. Hydropower dams, reservoirs, protected areas (as since 2016) and villages in the Cardamom Mountains. (Source: Open Development Cambodia 2017).

Table 1. Facts of the CDM projects.

Name of CDM project activity	Date registered	Annual emission reduction (tCO2/year)	Project participants (host country)	Credit buyer
Lower Stung Russei Chrum Hydro-Electric Project	21 August 2012	701	China Huadian Lower Stung Russei Chrum Hydro-Electric Project Company	Switzerland via Vitol SA
Stung Tatay Hydroelectric Project	14 December 2012	563	Cambodian Tatay Hydropower Limited/China Heavy National Machinery	Netherlands via Gazprom Marketing & Trading Singapore
Cambodia Stung Atay Hydropower Project	19 December 2012	266	CHD Cambodia Hydropower Development Company/Datang (China)	Sweden via Tricorona Carbon Asset Management Sweden
There are 6 other registered projects in Cambodia: 4 biogas, 1 biomass, 1 waste heat/cement, 1 hydro	Between 2006–2013	Total of the six other projects: 490.6		Buyers include companies from Japan, UK and Denmark

Sources: UNEP DTU Partnership (2016) and unpublished documents from Climate Change Department, Ministry of Environment, Cambodia.

Table 2. Elemental aspects of the zones of exclusion discussed in the paper.

Zones	Conservation	Hydropower concessions	CDM	Logging
Timeline	Phnom Samkos and Aural Wildlife Sanctuaries established in 1993; Central Cardamom Mountains Protected Forest established in 2002; Southern Cardamoms Protected Forest in 2004	Atay: Construction started in 2008, operational in 2014. Russei Chrum: Construction started in 2010, operational in 2014. Tatay: Construction started in 2011, operational in 2014.	Atay: Registered 19 December 2012 Russei Chrum: Registered 21 August 2012 Tatay: Registered 14 December 2012	Logging contract to MDS for Atay in 2009, peak logging period 2010–2011. Logging contracts to Timbergreen for Tatay and Russei Chrum in 2010, peak logging period 2011–2012.
Authority	Co-governed by Forestry Administration or Ministry of Environment and international NGOs. In the beginning some resemblance to a space administrated by international NGOs, but then increasingly under the control of state authorities.	State authorities decide on the establishment of the hydropower concessions. Inside the zones, de facto control over people and river (+ other resources) exerted by the hydropower companies (to the extent of extraterritorial authority features).	International accounting standards under the authority of CDM-Executive Board/Kyoto Protocol. Host country’s Designated National Authority (in Cambodia within Ministry of Environment) sets criteria for sustainable development benefits.	Logging tycoons with rule-making authority, para-military groups with rule enforcing authority. State authorities decide to ‘look the other way’.
Purpose	For the conservation organisations: preservationist logic. For the state authorities: state territorialisation and the closing of ungovernable frontier dynamics.	Profit-making for the companies, but also entangled in the complex Cambodia–China relations with an economic and political rationale.	Cheap emission reductions to companies in Sweden, Switzerland and Netherlands. Profits from carbon credits to hydropower companies. Supposedly sustainable development for Cambodia.	Officially reservoir clearing, unofficially monopolisation of timber profits, enrichment of local tycoons and timber rents for strengthening the party-state in a form that provides exclusion from any external oversight.
Exclusionary mechanisms	Different, surveying, monitoring and patrolling mechanisms are used to control the resource use and users within the protected areas. Potential in-migrants, ‘land-grabbers’, poachers, miners, loggers are excluded, although not always effectively.	Strictly controlled boundaries, state authorities excluded from oversight, NGOs not allowed access for monitoring. These guarantee cheap labour. No evictions, but exclusion of many other ways of using the rivers and related resources; cf. impacts on fisheries.	Different accounting techniques establish the boundaries of the zone. Labour conditions and most of the dams’ effects, excluded from CDM zone but through problematic measures (like the uncritical use of EIAs).	Intimidation and use of violence is used to exclude all competing brokers and independent loggers. The controlling measures of the conservation zone are also exploited to guarantee the monopolisation of timber extraction.
Overlaps and interaction with the other zones	Geographically the hydropower and logging zones are nested within the conservation zone. Provided enabling conditions for hydropower concessions without evictions and for the monopolisation of timber rents.	Geographically nested within the conservation zones. Also part of the CDM technological and regulatory zone. The construction of the dams and reservoirs triggered logging within the conservation zones.	Hydropower dams are partly nested within the CDM regulatory zone. The carbon reductionism of the technological zone provides invisibility to the dispossessive socio-ecological effects and exploitative labour relations.	Geographically nested within conservation zones. The logging zone is triggered by the hydropower dams and it makes use of the conservation zone’s exclusionary mechanisms.

Open Development Cambodia. 2017. “Maps Catalog.” Accessed 22 May 2017. https://opendevelopmentcambodia.net/layers.

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UNEP DTU Partnership. 2016. Accessed 1 March 2016. http://www.cdmpipeline.org/.

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