Improved living standard of the people through community participation in sustainable forest management

Cambodia

Forests in Cambodia are critical to poverty reduction and the sustainable livelihoods of the rural population, both as sources of raw materials and as providers of ecological benefits especially hydrological stabilization and biodiversity conservation. Deforestation has increased greatly in recent years, and community-based alternatives to the concession system of forest management are being developed. New legislation has enabled community forestry as a management mechanism, and provides a beginning measure of decentralized authority for its implementation.

The purpose of this pre-project was to carry out a baseline survey of communities dependant on the reources in a particular area of degraded state forest land, to demonstrate the technical, economic and social feasibility of forest management with the organized participation of the local communities and to design a project to implement a community-based reforestation and forest management regime.