[Music] this milky white sap is latex and it feeds the world's appetite for natural rubber over 70 percent of the global supply goes into making tires for cars trucks and planes but the explosion of rubber tree plantations here in cambodia over the past few decades has devastated lives and displaced thousands of people seoul tong is one of them seoul takes this path every day to reach his rice fields he has to walk through a massive rubber plantation to get there around three and a half acres of land is all he has left to provide for
his family the government leased more than a third of the land he used to farm to a rubber producer [Music] saul was only able to secure a land title for his remaining rice fields foreign high [Music] every acre counts for saul who grows rice cassava and potatoes on his land [Music] he used to be able to forage for vegetables and hunt wild animals in surrounding forests to feed his family but those were also uprooted [Music] [Music] ethnic group they're one of more than a dozen indigenous groups in northeastern cambodia who have been losing land to
a big vietnamese rubber company called huanganjialai or hegel and it's been difficult for them to get it back because even though the ketchup and other groups have lived here for generations many didn't have state recognized ownership of their land it wasn't until 2009 that the government created a legal process for indigenous communities to apply for collective land titles the rush for rubber in cambodia began when global prices for natural rubber peaked in 2011. companies started looking for places to develop plantations in southeast asia a region that produces most of the world's natural rubber the cambodian
government saw an opportunity to cash in by 2012 it at least three quarters of the country's farmland to mostly foreign companies nearly half of that land was turned into rubber plantations and the people who already occupied that land say they only found out when developers showed up to clear it um [Music] foreign rashaam lauren used to grow crops and feed dozens of chickens pigs and cows on 12 acres but the government leased most of that land to hegel [Music] foreign doesn't have enough land to grow crops and he has just two cows left [Music] despite
the risk rasham wanted to take us to the other side of the fence to a cluster of trees surrounded by hegel farmland [Music] this is what's left of a burial site that has been sacred to rasham and his community for generations rashaam and local ngos say hegel cleared the surrounding forest in 2011. it was only through community protest that they managed to save a fraction of the burial the graves of his grandchildren were destroyed and his son's gravesite happened to be spared [Music] my the fight to reclaim indigenous land still rages on in 2014 17
villages including rashaams filed a complaint against the world bank which funded hegel's growth the world bank says it funds projects that help reduce poverty in developing countries but a 2015 report by the international consortium of investigative journalists found that the world bank financed governments and companies accused of human rights violations such as rape murder and torture in 2019 the cambodian government ruled that hegel must return 1800 acres to the indigenous communities in ratnakiri province that's less than two percent of all of hegel's land leases still hegel initially refused to return it then in 2021 an
auto company called taco took over all of hegel's land leases kia bmw peugeot and mazda order cars and other auto parts from taco insider repeatedly reached out to hegel and these other companies none of them responded hegel still recently cleared land they promised to return tapa youth a member of the churai ethnic group took us to a place local indigenous communities refer to as a spirit mountain [Music] they believe the spirits of their ancestors reside here but in 2020 while many villagers were under covet lockdown hegel mined part of this mountain according to local media
this footage was filmed by locals who caught developers excavating with a backhoe around didn't respond when we asked about the clearing of the spirit mountain and burial site demand for natural rubber is growing around the world it's expected to jump nearly 30 percent in the next decade alone but most of the world still relies on southeast asia synthetic rubber has become a popular alternative but it isn't strong enough to replace natural rubber in things like airplane and truck tires the governor of ratnakiri told insider that hegel agreed to return the 1800 acres of land in
january but indigenous communities are still waiting meanwhile they've been working with local ngos to secure land titles for the few plots they have left ngos and indigenous people say the process is slow and titles only grant them a small portion of their traditional land as of 2021 less than 10 of the 455 indigenous communities in cambodia have collective land titles [Music] be [Music] you
