Cambodia's government, facing growing protests by villagers and warnings about disappearing wilderness, suspended the granting of land to domestic and foreign companies on Monday in a move to curb forced evictions and illegal logging.Rights groups in the impoverished but resource-rich Southeast Asian country said the temporary measure did not go far enough and a permanent ban was needed.The government said in the order, signed by Prime Minister Hun Sen, it would confiscate any concessions that involved the grabbing of villagers' land and illegal logging.

A Special Side-Event Presentation by the Prey Lang Community Network, Indigenous Active Rights Members, Organization to Promote Kuy Culture, and NGO Forum Cambodia.

This past weekend, the killing of activist Chut Wutty and his tireless efforts to protect the Prey Lang forest and the environment of Cambodia received some high profile coverage on a New York Times Blog. Hopefully this story will gain traction, and with international pressure, our demands for an investigation into Chut Wutty's shooting will be heard.

The UN is expressing concern over the recent killing of Cambodian activist Chut Wutty. According to a spokesman for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), “Despite the current lack of clarity about what exactly happened, we are very concerned that the killing of Mr. Wutty marks the latest and most lethal in a series of gun attacks on human rights defenders in Cambodia.”Chut Wutty, the intrepid activist who had been working to protect the forests of Cambodia from illegal logging and to expose government corruption, was shot and killed by Cambodian military police on April 26. He had been out surveying illegal logging sites with two journalists, looking for evidence to bring a lawsuit against the government for aiding the activity, when he was stopped by military police.

Chut Wutty, the Founder and Director of the Natural Resource Protection Group (NRPG), has been shot dead in an incident in Koh Kong province in which military police officer In Rattana is also said to have died today, 26 April 2012. The details of the incident in which the two men died remain unclear but their deaths have been confirmed by military police spokesman Kheng Tito. Wutty’s death has also been confirmed by his nephew, Chuon Phearum, as well as Koh Kong provincial military police chief, Thong Naron.

On April 16, it was announced from San Francisco that Evgenia Chirikova, one of the founders and organizers of the Defend Khimki Forest movement, based in Moscow, Russia, is the 2012 European winner of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize. "EarthAction salutes Chirikova for her focused, persistent and effective work to protect this important forest on the outskirts of Moscow," says Lois Barber, EarthAction's Co-founder and Executive Director. Starting in July 2010 and throughout 2011, EarthAction rallied its global network in support of Chirikova's work to protect the Khimki Forest from being the site of a planned highway connecting Moscow and St. Petersburg. For its part, EarthAction issued a series of global Action Alerts mobilizing people and organizations worldwide to take action in support of the Khimki forest and the local organizers in Moscow.

In East Africa, farmers and villagers head-carry because affordable handcarts or wheelbarrows are not available to them. But a simple tool like a cart can save a family thousands of hours a year, allowing children to return to school and adults to work on income-generating opportunities. Fortunately, there is an organization working to make this essential tool available at a realistic and affordable price; their name is Anza and they are planning to sell their revolutionary handcart in East Africa at a radically low cost to villagers all over the region. Below, you can see the “Anza Cart” (left), and how it compares to current alternatives:

Grant a primary education to every child on Earth? Bring clean water and basic sanitation to the entire global population? Reduce maternal mortality rates by three quarters? Adequately treat every person living with HIV/AIDS? End armed conflict? All of the above?

Global Campaign to Save the Prey Lang Forest

Prey Lang (“Our Forest”) is the largest evergreen lowland forest remaining in South East Asia, and it is under threat.It is home to an indigenous population of 200,000 native Kuy who have lived in peaceful harmony with the forest for hundreds of years. The majority of families sustain themselves by harvesting resin, rottan, spiders, palm hearts, and medicinal plants.A recent report from USAID estimates that without urgent action, the forest will be effectively gone in 2-3 years.

EarthAction, a global network of over 2,000 organizations in 160 countries, and Cultural Survival, an advocacy organization for Indigenous Peoples’ rights, have begun a worldwide campaign to protect the Prey Lang forest in Cambodia—its people, its trees, its life. The international campaign supports and complements the local efforts of the Prey Lang Community Network, a group of mostly Indigenous people whose villages surround the Prey Lang forest and whose livelihoods depend on the forest’s resources. Prey Lang, about the size of Rhode Island, is the last large primary forest of its kind on the Indochina peninsula.

What is desertification? It is a process by which fertile soil nutrients are leached due to topsoil erosion from climatic effects and poor agricultural practices. This process transforms arable land into a dry desert unequipped for the growing of crops and other common agricultural practices. The Navajo Nation in the southwestern United States is the largest area of severely desertified land in North America.

Kony 2012, a campaign by Invisible Children to make famous the insidious actions of one Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda. Watch the video,then read EarthAction interns Christine and Walker's four reasons why this viral campaign isn’t enough to solve Uganda’s conflict and see suggestions for further research.Read our list and then you be the judge- has Invisible Children brought an important issue to it’s long awaited fame on the internet? Or has it oversimplified a complex issue and cast Westerners as the heroes?

Watch this simple but powerful demonstration by Yukie Hori of the UNCCD about why we must combat desertification.

The past two days of the World Forum on Desertification have been a great success! Thanks to everyone who has participated. If you missed it, here are some highlights:

Despite the international ban on the trade of Elephant Ivory in 1989, it is estimated that every year 38,000 elephants are killed for ivory sales on the black market.Poachers sell raw ivory for around $20 per pound. Most of this ivory eventually makes its way to China, where it is resold at $700 per pound—or more. This means that a single tusk from a full-grown bull elephant can fetch upwards of $50,000 on the black market. The poaching of elephants for their ivory tusks requires the death of some of the most beautiful and endangered animals on our planet.

This is a reminder that you are invited to participate in a Virtual World Community Forum on Desertification and Citizen Action -- Saving the Life-Giving Soils of the World, that will take place from Tuesday, February 28, 2012 to Tuesday, March 6, 2012.