How Buddhist monks are battling deforestation in Cambodia

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Cambodia has one of the world's highest deforestation rates. But a group of Buddhist monks are stepping up efforts to save forests by publicly revealing wrongdoings and mobilizing local villagers. Ate Hoekstra reports.

His memories often bring But Buntenh back to Cambodia thirty years ago. There were jungles as far as the eye could see. Centuries-old trees gave shade and provided shelter to birds and wild animals. The air was clean, nature gave the local people everything they needed. The forest near the village where Buntenh grew up was filled with wild pigs. "We were hunting them. During my youth, there was nothing as tasty as the meat of a wild pig," the 36-year-old monk said, laughing.

The forests of Buntenh's youth are long gone, and with it the wildlife and the birds that lived in it. The loss of it grieves the Buddhist monk, but he says he is committed to put an end to deforestation in Cambodia while there is still some jungle left.

It's an extremely challenging mission in which Buntenh and his fellow monks, who are united under the group Independent Monk Network for Social Justice, regularly put their own lives at risk.

Buntenh: 'The people who cut down the forest think they are superior, but in reality they are stupid. Only the forest is superior'

A large empty forest

On a recent early morning, Buntenh - wearing flip-flops, small glasses and an orange robe - walks through Prey Lang, one of the Southeast Asian nation's largest and oldest evergreen woodlands. The sun shines through the canopy and from afar the crying noise of a motor saw sounds through the air.

Buntenh is on his way to a workshop, in which he and other monks teach the local people how to use social media to protect themselves and the forest. It is badly needed, he says, as the survival of Prey Lang - meaning "Great Forest" in Kuy, the local minority language - is under threat. Large parts of the forest have already disappeared to make space for plantations. In areas that are protected from such land concessions, illegal loggers cut down tree after tree.

"The people who cut down the forest think they are superior, but in reality they are stupid. Only the forest is superior," Buntenh said. Sixteen years ago, he decided to join the monkhood. Now he is trying to convince the people that the world cannot exist without trees. "No one has told me that I should go out there to protect the forest, but for me it was a logical thing to do. I am doing all I can to save it. I plant new trees, I help the people who live from the forest, I am reminding the government of the promises they've made."

LONG ARTICLE to be read here http://www.dw.com/en/how-buddhist-monks-are-battling-deforestation-in-cambodia/a-19386396