This is the second part of a Mongabay series investigating Cambodia’s illicit timber trade. Read Part One. Several Cambodian journalists helped to report this investigation, but have requested not to be named due to the sensitive nature of the story. SIHANOUKVILLE, Cambodia — On a rain-sodden day in September 2023, reporters entered the Sihanoukville Special Economic Zone on the southwest coast of Cambodia, in the country’s largest port city. Established in 2008 through a partnership between Chinese and Cambodian private companies, the Sihanoukville SEZ hosts a range of Cambodian and Chinese ventures exporting products worldwide. Among them is Nature Flooring (Cambodia), a Chinese-owned company established in the Sihanoukville SEZ in May 2019. Nature Flooring is just one of the many subsidiaries of China’s Nature Home Group, focused on wooden flooring and doors. The firm’s website states that the group is valued at 87.6 billion yuan (about $12 billion) and boasts several partnerships with U.S. companies. Over the course of a year, Mongabay has collected evidence that suggests much of the plywood used to craft the products sold by Nature Flooring and other companies within the Sihanoukville SEZ may have been illegally logged from protected Cambodian rainforests. The investigation found that U.S. consumers risk furnishing their homes with flooring products made from wood logged illegally from the Cambodian rainforest while believing the products to be sustainably sourced. Cambodia’s forests have been devastated by logging operations that have undermined conservation efforts nationwide and exacerbated risks in a country already vulnerable to the…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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