Description:
Executive Summary:
"Like many nations in Southeast Asia, Cambodia faces challenges respecting the rights
and culture of its upland dwelling ethnic minorities while pursing national development
strategies1. Centrally designed planning and economic goals have been prescribed for
these remote areas often without recognizing the extraordinary knowledge indigenous
communities have of their environment and the special resources they can bring to its
further development. As a consequence, public and private sector initiatives for development
may fit poorly, or conflict with local needs and management systems, resulting
in destabilizing shifts in land-use and tenure systems as well as social systems.
Ratanakiri has approximately 250 villages with 100,000 people who live either within
forests or within 5 kilometers of them2. Annual population growth of 4 to 5 percent
from natural increase and migration, combined with rapidly expanding market penetration,
is putting immense pressure on land and forests and fueling a large and illegal
land market. As indigenous communities lose control of their lands they are forced to
retreat further into the forest, clearing those areas in turn. At the current rate of forest
loss it appears much of the forest in Ratanakiri will be cleared in the next decade. During
the same period it is likely that half of all indigenous lands in the province will be
transferred to outside investors, concessionaires, or Khmer migrants from lowland areas.
The alienation of indigenous community lands is and will result in growing social
and economic marginalization, while the clearing of natural forests will likely destabilize
micro-climatic patterns, affect watershed hydrology, and erode biodiversity. These
changes, in turn, may limit the sustainability of any new economic production systems
that replace existing land-use patterns (i.e., forests and swiddens).
This paper draws on case studies from three communities in Ratanakiri to illustrate
both the forces driving land-use and tenure change as well as how effective community
stewardship can guide agricultural transitions. The study combines a time series of remotely
sensed data from 1989 to 2006 to evaluate changes in land use, and relates this
data to in-depth ground truth observations and social research from the three villages.
The methodology was designed to evaluate how indigenous communities who had historically
managed forest lands as communal resources, are responding to market forces
and pressures from land speculators. Krala Village received support from local NGOs to
strengthen community, map its land, demarcate boundaries, strengthen resource use
regulations, and develop land-use plans. The two other villages, Leu Keun and Tuy,
each received successively less support from outside organizations for purposes of resource
mapping and virtually no support for institutional strengthening. The remote
sensing data indicates that in Krala, over the sixteen year study period, protected forest
areas remained virtually intact, while total forest cover declined at a rate of only 0.86
per year."
Source/publisher:
Community Forestry International (CFI) and the East West Center
Date of Publication:
2008-00-00
Date of entry:
2015-01-29
Grouping:
- Individual Documents
Category:
Language:
English
Local URL:
Format:
pdf
Size:
2.39 MB