Conversion Timber, Forest Monitoring, and Land-Use Governance in Cambodia

In Cambodia, timber concessions for selective logging under forest management plans were effectively suspended indefinitely due to governance and complicance issues. However, Cambodia’s exports of value timber have continued, raising the question where this timber comes from if not from official forest concessions. Extensive media, civil society, United Nations, and technical reports indicate that the main source of wood harvested in Cambodia since mid-2004 consists of 1) “conversion timber” from forest lands allocated to large-scale agri-industrial plantations, and 2) illegally harvested timber from adjacent lands.