Place
Ratanakiri
រតនគិរី
Ratanakiri (រតនគិរី) is a province in the northeast of Cambodia.[1][2] It borders Laos to the north, Vietnam to the east, Mondulkiri to the south and Stung Treng to the west, and its capital is Banlung.[3][2] The province is home to several Indigenous peoples, among them the Tampuan, Kreung, Jarai and Brao.[1]
Geography
The Sesan and Srepok rivers cross the province from Vietnam, flowing west to the Sekong, a tributary of the Mekong. North of the Sesan, toward the Lao border, the land is covered in broadleaf evergreen forest, and south of the Srepok in tropical deciduous forest. Between the two rivers lies a plateau of red basalt soils about 300 meters high, where Banlung stands.[2] The rainy season runs from May or June to October or November, and more than 2,000 millimeters of rain falls each year.[2]
The 2019 census gave the province an area of 10,782 square kilometers, while Fox and his co-authors put it at about 12,500.[4][2] In the official list for the 2011 economic census, Ratanakiri had the municipality of Banlung and eight districts: Andoung Meas, Bar Kaev, Koun Mom, Lumphat, Ou Chum, Ou Ya Dav, Ta Veaeng and Veun Sai.[5]
People
The provisional results of the 2019 census counted 204,027 people in 47,417 households, up from 150,466 in 2008, a growth of 2.8 percent a year. The National Institute of Statistics linked this growth to a high birth rate and to people moving in for farming and other work. The province had 19 people per square kilometer.[4]
At a 2013 assembly of the province's Indigenous peoples, Radio Free Asia Khmer named seven: the Tampuan, Kreung, Jarai, Kavet, Kachok, Brao and Lun.[1] A case study from about 2001, published by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, wrote that almost three-quarters of the province's people belonged to an ethnic minority.[6] Cambodge Mag writes that the Jarai pass family names and inheritance through women, and that some plots of forest are kept as sacred, guarded by taboo instead of law.[7]
History
Into Cambodia writes that the province was created in 1959 from part of Stung Treng, and that the French had planted rubber at Labansiek, the present Banlung.[3] Fox and his co-authors describe villagers returning after 1979 from the lowlands, to which the Khmer Rouge had moved them by force.[2] The case study published by the Food and Agriculture Organization says that rebels remained in the forests long after 1979; in the early 1990s they gave up their arms, and logging trucks began to arrive.[6]
Land and economy
Writing in 2009, Fox and his co-authors described great changes in how land in the province was used and held over the previous decade. In Krala, a village about 25 kilometers north of Banlung, four families had planted cashew trees in 1994, and by 2000 nearly 100 of its 135 families had.[2] About ten years before 2019, rubber concessions had been given to the Vietnamese company Hoang Anh Gia Lai. In 2019 the provincial governor asked the agriculture ministry to remove 64 areas from them, among them forests, wetlands and burial grounds of a dozen Indigenous communities. The Highlanders Association and two advocacy groups representing the communities said the decision returned a further 742 hectares.[8]
The province is known for its gems. Open Development Cambodia, summarizing The Phnom Penh Post, writes that they are zircon, which sellers call Bakeo gems.[9]
Places
Yeak Laom is a crater lake about 5 kilometers from Banlung, some 750 meters across.[3] Cambodge Mag writes that the Tampuan community has managed the lake and its forest since 1998, under a 25-year agreement with the provincial authorities.[7] In 2019 the Ministry of Environment approved the registration of the lake as a community protected area.[10]
Virachey National Park, the largest national park in Cambodia, covers more than 3,300 square kilometers of mountain forest, upland grassland and river gorges. It lies mostly in Ratanakiri and reaches into Stung Treng.[11] It is listed as a heritage park of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and a 2007 survey found gaur, yellow-cheeked gibbons, Asiatic black bears and sun bears there.[12]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Radio Free Asia Khmer, Rodtha Visal, សមាជចម្រុះជនជាតិដើមភាគតិចប្រចាំឆ្នាំ២០១៣នៅខេត្តរតនគិរី (December 27, 2013)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 Southeast Asian Studies, Jefferson Fox, John B. Vogler and Mark Poffenberger, Understanding Changes in Land and Forest Resource Management Systems: Ratanakiri, Cambodia (December 2009)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Into Cambodia, Ratanakiri Province (undated)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 National Institute of Statistics, Provisional Population Census 2019 (2019)
- ↑ Statistics Bureau of Japan, District Profile of Cambodian 2011 Economic Census: 16 Ratanak Kiri Province (December 11, 2012)
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Experience 3: Indigenous forest management, Cambodia (undated)
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Cambodge Mag, Ratanakiri: The Cambodia Time Has Not Yet Caught Up With (undated)
- ↑ Eco-Business, from the Thomson Reuters Foundation, Cambodia returns land taken from indigenous people in 'unprecedented' move (March 28, 2019)
- ↑ Open Development Cambodia, Gems in the rough in Ratanakkiri (December 2, 2013)
- ↑ Open Development Cambodia, Ministry approves protected area status for Yeak Laom Lake in Ratanakkiri (April 29, 2019)
- ↑ Mongabay, Gregory McCann, The last elephants of Cambodia's Virachey National Park (March 7, 2017)
- ↑ Mongabay, Jeremy Hance, Cambodia approves rubber plantation in national park (March 13, 2011)