CO-506695 The Extractives Industrial sector investment in Cambodia have been growing rapidly. The Ministry of Mining and Energy (MME) opens more for local and oversea companies to invest in the mining sector. During the MME’s annual meeting in February 2020, the MME updated that there are 17 mining exploitation licenses, 37 mineral exploration licenses, and 323 construction mineral licenses were issued.
The mining companies have been known and operating include Renaissance Mineral (Cambodia) Limited, Mesco Gold, Aluminum Development (Cambodia) Corp co., Ltd, Angkor Gold Corp, Golden Resources Development Co Ltd, Kun Yuan International (Cambodia) Co., Ltd and NITTESU MINING (CAMBODIA) Ltd. Based on information from the EIA reports and approved license, concession areas of these companies overlapped on Wildlife Sanctuaries, Community Protected Area (CPA), Prey Lang including community forestry and land areas of DPA’s target communities. As example, the granted exploration concession areas to NITTESU MINING (CAMBODIA) Ltd from Japan, is 13,618.1 hectares and it has overlapped on Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary.
In June 2021, the Cambodia first off-shore oil project that was sounded promising few years ago turned to be stalled recently as Kris-Energy announced bankruptcy to continue to operate the project. Given geographic locations of the mineral, oil and gas deposits that predominantly exit in Mekong and Tonle Sa watersheds, explorations havebeen and are being conducted.
Given the importance of extractive resourcesand reduction of revenues from other sectors such as fishery, land and forest, Government seems to give more priority to explore and exploit extractive industries resources in the Mekong and Tonle Sap Watersheds. If exploitations occur in those watershedswithout discrimination and proper regulations, it will cost sever environmental and social consequences to the troubled water and lands in Tonle Sap and Mekong and the livelihoods of millions people.
In addition, the revenue collection and management inEI sector is another concerning issue, based on the revenue collection strategy 2019 -2023, as it is indicated that mining and energy revenue collection increased in an average 41.1% annually started from 2013until 2018. Until 2019, Ministry of Mine andEnergy (MME) collected 3.3 million US$ of mining development fund. This fund is set aside to be used to support local development of mining affected communities. The information about the fund has not been well disseminated to the public especially mining affected communities. The procedures of how community access to this fund has not been available yet.
The increasing investment of extractive industries sector in Cambodia has created a huge concern about social and environmental impacts of affected communities, especially Indigenous Peoples (IPs), including losing IPs cultures and mean of livelihoods, water and soil pollution, health impacts, conflicts over natural resources, and human rights violations. Therefore, Oxfam and its civil society partnersandalliances are working to promote good governance and responsible investment, particularly among major extractive projects in the northeastern provinces of Cambodia.

Oxfam will further build strategic alliance and the established important coalitions onextractive industries including (1) the Extractive Industries Social and Environmental Impact Network; and (2) NGO Coalitionon Extractive Industry Governance.
Oxfam and its allies will establish IPs rights and FPIC Think Tank to make the resourcesavailable for learning, advocacy and research related to social and environmental impacts of indigenous peoples from extractive industries project and other development projects.