Fears of climate conflict expected to erupt in states with unstable political and economic systems contribute to the global land rush through emerging politics of climate change mitigation and adaptation. Scholarship reveals, however, that solutions to the problem of climate change, like biofuel production, carbon capture, and 'climate-smart' industrial agriculture, are exacerbating both conflict and environmental change. This contradiction is created in part by long-standing and unchanging policies regarding societal security, which legitimizes economic development's extractive resource transformations to avert conflict, incorporates climate change mitigation and adaptation into a development framework, and exacerbates the environmental crises of over-development. On a positive note, the obvious failure of these policies gives rise to social and scientific collaborations that disrupt the conflict scenarios promoting continued economic growth as the path to peace. New cooperation from the ground up can create new possibilities for integrated, and thus actually sustainable futures.

Introduction Cambodia's forests were key players in the process of state formation during the post-socialist, UN-sponsored 'transition' to democracy and a market economy. With un-self-conscious certainty, World Bank, FAO, and UN advisors declared forest exploitation to be Cambodia's best option to support their fledgling democracy. They promoted Forest Concessions, in which vast tracts of forest were leased to international timber companies, as a first step toward transition.

On the first spring-like weekend in April 2014, a collection of scholars whose work engages South and Southeast Asian Buddhism convened at Cornell’s Kahin Center for Advanced Research on Southeast Asia for a
day-long workshop, “Rethinking Southeast Asian and Southern Buddhism.”

Forest degradation contributes to ecological and climate instability, foreclosing all possibilities for
mitigation. At the same time, forest resources such as timber, metal, and land for agricultural
production are vital for economic development. In Cambodia, economic development stalled while
the country and region suffered war for over thirty years from the late 1960s through the late 1990s.

The Think Biotech Cambodia Co, ltd. is currently operating an Afforestation/Reforestation (A/R) project that straddles the boundaries of Kratie and Steung
Treng provinces. The project site covers 34,007 ha of land at the eastern edge of the Prey Lang forest along the Mekong River.

This project was undertaken in advance of new legislation affecting the Prey Lang Forest. A Protected Area subdecree initiative was originally drafted by MAFF with support of USAID in 2011. At that time, there were antagonistic relationships between MAFF, the FA, and PLCN at this time.