Nehru has strong investigative journalism skills and was a recipient of the STRIDES Journalist Fellowship in 2024 and the Mekong Data Journalism Fellowship in 2021. He reported on the threat to karst landscapes by the increasing cement production in a southern province of Cambodia and the threats facing the Mekong River due to land concessions and explored the devastating impact of rapid development on indigenous communities and the environment. He uses data to drive investigations and tell a story that resonates with and engages his audiences using relevant and credible data and monitoring and tracking changes over time.
It was late in the afternoon of Sept. 16 when Ouk Mao finally answered his phone. The environmental journalist had spent much of that Monday making preparations in case he was jailed the next day.
Mao was accused of illegal logging in the northeastern province of Stung Treng.
Since 2020, the mountain, swaddled in forest and home to a flock of bats, had served as the centerpiece to an ecotourism venture that was run largely by the Indigenous Kuy ethnic group to which Mao belongs.
As Cambodia tries to cement its future, the cost is the limestone mountains called karsts and the ecosystems they contain.
High-profile interventions by Cambodia’s former leader and weak legislation have allowed the illegal wildlife trade to persist largely in the open. The case of a gas station menagerie in western Cambodia is emblematic of the ease with which even endangered species can be bought and sold.
In the remote and densely forested northeastern province of Mondulkiri, Song Pro, a member of the indigenous Bunong community, stares at a rubber plantation that once was a sacred forest.
Cambodian authorities have greenlit studies for a major hydropower dam on the Mekong River in Stung Treng province, despite a ban on dam building on the river that’s been in place since 2020. Plans for the dam have been around since 2007, but the project has repeatedly been shelved over criticism of its impacts.
A dam being built in Laos near the border with Cambodia imperils downstream communities and the Mekong ecosystem as a whole, experts and affected community members say.
The Sekong A dam will close off the Sekong River by the end of this year, restricting its water flow.
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