2006-11By Stephen Dale
The International Development Research Center (IDRC)
Government of Canada
To protect Cambodia’s threatened mangrove stands — and to improve the lives and livelihoods of local people — it has been necessary to take a long-term look at social relations and the legacy of war.
Koh Kong province in western Cambodia, resting on the Gulf of Thailand, is a lush and formerly remote region that boasts one of the most impressive remaining mangrove stands in all of Southeast Asia.
Mangrove trees are species that have adapted to life in brackish water — some of them have special straw-like roots called pneumatophores that stick out of the water to draw in air. Growing in large clusters in coastal areas, they bring multiple environmental benefits, such as providing a protected breeding ground for crabs, fish, shrimps, oysters, and other aquatic life. There are also suggestions that they can buffer the effects of storms on exposed coastlines.
But in Koh Kong, the mangrove forest was also under threat as waves of new arrivals attempted to earn their livelihoods from the area’s rich resource base. Mangrove trees have a variety of uses; for instance, they can be made into superior quality charcoal, a valued commodity both domestically and in the markets of neighbouring Thailand. The abundance of fish and seafood has also attracted a multitude of foreign boats that have over-harvested the waters near to Koh Kong. Shrimp farms that divert salt water into onshore ponds have also had negative environmental impacts.
Collaborative progress
Today, however, there are clear signs that a collaborative environmental management project has helped local communities to develop the capacity to rein in the destruction that, paradoxically, only began after a period of genocide and brutal warfare ended in 1991. During the conflict, it was difficult to travel in Koh Kong. Yet after peace was restored, roads were rebuilt, mines removed, and new waves of migrants — some of them displaced from other parts of the country — began to build charcoal kilns, cut down trees, and harvest fish, often using destructive means such as dynamite fishing.
“When we started our program in December 1997, there was a lot of destruction of the mangrove,” recalls Kim Nong, a deputy director with Cambodia’s national environment ministry and a driving force behind the Participatory Management of Mangrove Resources (PMMR) project, supported by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC). “The actual government policy was that people shouldn’t cut down the mangrove trees to make charcoal, [although corruption was an acknowledged—and since defeated — problem that allowed the destruction to continue.]”
“That’s how it started,” he continues, “but we’ve been working with local people to understand what the special environmental benefits of the mangrove are. There were large areas that had very strong degradation — that were clear-cut. But now those areas have been recovered because the local people have been replanting. I would say 90% of the recovery is done. In the whole area there is no more charcoal-making and the blast fishing has stopped.”
A documented trend
Just how the tide was turned in Koh Kong is explained in a chapter of a new book, Communities, Livelihoods and Natural Resources, edited by Stephen Tyler and published by IDRC and Intermediate Technology Publications. The book surveys the experience of a number of community-based projects across Asia that have enlisted governments and local communities as comanagers of endangered natural resources. The chapter on Koh Kong is co-authored by Nong and Melissa Marschke, a former graduate student who has been actively involved in the project since 1998 and is now an environmental studies post doctoral fellow at York University in Toronto, Canada.
As Nong and Marschke make clear, the biggest challenge in Koh Kong has not been finding a technical solution to the area’s environmental woes, but rather in building social networks so that communities, local authorities, and provincial and national officials can work together. Cambodia has a very hierarchal social structure where people in positions of authority are not used to taking direction from people at the grassroots.
“When we first started talking about protecting the mangrove,” Nong elaborates, “the local authorities and most people in government said ‘this is the responsibility of the government, not local people.’ They didn’t accept that local communities should be involved in managing the coastal resources.”
Overturning war’s legacy
This longstanding exclusion of citizens from the decision-making process is further exacerbated by the psychological legacy of warfare and the genocide of the post-1975 Pol Pot regime, adds Marschke.
“When you’ve gotten through such a horrendous period and you’re coming out of a conflict situation, you tend to keep your head down and be risk-averse,” she says. “You’ve seen the consequences of speaking out in the recent past and that makes you nervous about challenging the system too much. As a result, you don’t have the kind of civil society movements in Cambodia that you’ve got in the Philippines or Thailand.”
This didn’t bode well for the future of the mangrove, since community engagement, the confidence to experiment with new ideas, and open communication between different social players were all essential preconditions to finding a pathway toward sustainable use.
Communities are central
So the PMMR team set out to improve the social climate. It attempted to build understanding between local people and all levels of government by organizing workshops and meetings, and to deepen the parties’ appreciation of what was possible by sending local authorities to Thailand to learn about mangrove management and villagers to other areas of Cambodia where community-based natural resource management projects were unfolding. It was important for the attitudes of people in the local community to change, so that they would take on more responsibility for better managing the resources upon which their livelihoods and well-being depended. Rather than asking local people to follow a blueprint drawn up elsewhere, the PMMR sought to give them the insight and skills to implement their own plan.
When a functioning partnership finally gelled, it was clear that all sides had come to appreciate the contributions of their counterparts. In 2000, the national environment minister offered a high-level stamp of approval by visiting the area. Beyond the symbolism, this official endorsement of the communities’ efforts had practical impact: in 2004, for example, the government committed itself to providing rice to local people in exchange for their work replanting the mangrove. (Marschke notes, however, that the communities’ activities have extended beyond replanting by including, for example, the implementation of a waste management system and the creation of a fish sanctuary.)
What lessons does Koh Kong’s experience hold for other areas facing similar environmental threats?
Many social complexities
On the surface, it appears that Cambodia faces a unique and particularly wide-ranging set of challenges in its quest to encourage a participatory and inclusive social response to environmental degradation. “You’ve got a post-conflict, post-colonial, post-socialist society — with lots of aid money influencing things now — so I think it’s fair to say that’s a fairly complex landscape,” says Marschke.
On the other hand, Gary Newkirk, a professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada believes that “all situations are unique, all situations are different, but they all have some elements that are transferable to other contexts.” An IDRC-supported network of community-based natural resource management projects, originally based at Dalhousie but since moved to the Philippines, has been working for years to draw out elements that are common to different projects. “It’s clear when researchers from different projects get together,” says Newkirk, “they are sifting all the time for things that will work at home. That kind of work has been to everyone’s benefit.”
Marschke similarly believes that the hard-won successes in Koh Kong can prove instructive elsewhere within Cambodia, where an abundance of community-based natural resource management projects have recently sprouted.
The elements of success
Partly, she explains, these projects have proliferated because an ongoing decentralization of government services has allowed for the creation of a clear legal framework under which community initiatives can operate. This decentralization has been encouraged by the international donor organizations that have been involved — on a grand scale — with Cambodia’s reconstruction since the 1990s. Decentralization is also a principle promoted through the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
The Canadian academic believes that the PMMR can shed substantial light on what can make a community-based natural resource management project successful. Perhaps most importantly, she says, Koh Kong shows that it is important to have a long-term commitment — to take the time to ensure that communities have a sense of “ownership” of the project and that local and national governments and international collaborators take on roles that support the communities’ work but don’t drive the process.
There is a deep and heartfelt commitment to restore the mangrove in Koh Kong, says Marschke. “The norms have been changed in terms of what’s acceptable and what’s not,” she elaborates. “Most people don’t feel comfortable to go out and blast fish anymore. People don’t feel comfortable dumping their waste in the water — they are thinking about waste management systems, and that’s been another major outcome in the villages, actually. The way of living has shifted toward something that is healthier and more sustainable, and people have internalized the idea that they can determine what the state of their environment will be.”
Stephen Dale is an Ottawa-based writer.
Contact information:
Brian Davy, Senior Program Specialist, RPE (Rural Poverty and Environment), IDRC, PO Box 8500, Ottawa, ON, Canada, K1G 3H9; Tel.: 613-236-5247, ext. 2540; Email: bdavy@idrc.ca
Kim Nong, Deputy Director, Ministry of the Environment, Cambodia. Tel.: 855-23-214108; Fax: 855- 23-214108; Email: pmmr@online.com.kh
Melissa Marschke, Post Doctoral Fellow,York University, Toronto, 270 York Lanes, 4700 Keele St., Toronto, ON Canada, M3J 1P3; Tel.: 416- 736-2100, ext 4406; Email: mmarschkeca@yahoo.com
Gary Newkirk, Marine Affairs Program, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, B3H 3H9; Tel.: 902-494-2284; Fax: 902- 494-1001; Email: gary.newkirk@dal.ca.
Koh Kong province in western Cambodia, resting on the Gulf of Thailand, is a lush and formerly remote region that boasts one of the most impressive remaining mangrove stands in all of Southeast Asia.
Mangrove trees are species that have adapted to life in brackish water — some of them have special straw-like roots called pneumatophores that stick out of the water to draw in air. Growing in large clusters in coastal areas, they bring multiple environmental benefits, such as providing a protected breeding ground for crabs, fish, shrimps, oysters, and other aquatic life. There are also suggestions that they can buffer the effects of storms on exposed coastlines.
But in Koh Kong, the mangrove forest was also under threat as waves of new arrivals attempted to earn their livelihoods from the area’s rich resource base. Mangrove trees have a variety of uses; for instance, they can be made into superior quality charcoal, a valued commodity both domestically and in the markets of neighbouring Thailand. The abundance of fish and seafood has also attracted a multitude of foreign boats that have over-harvested the waters near to Koh Kong. Shrimp farms that divert salt water into onshore ponds have also had negative environmental impacts.
Collaborative progress
Today, however, there are clear signs that a collaborative environmental management project has helped local communities to develop the capacity to rein in the destruction that, paradoxically, only began after a period of genocide and brutal warfare ended in 1991. During the conflict, it was difficult to travel in Koh Kong. Yet after peace was restored, roads were rebuilt, mines removed, and new waves of migrants — some of them displaced from other parts of the country — began to build charcoal kilns, cut down trees, and harvest fish, often using destructive means such as dynamite fishing.
“When we started our program in December 1997, there was a lot of destruction of the mangrove,” recalls Kim Nong, a deputy director with Cambodia’s national environment ministry and a driving force behind the Participatory Management of Mangrove Resources (PMMR) project, supported by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC). “The actual government policy was that people shouldn’t cut down the mangrove trees to make charcoal, [although corruption was an acknowledged—and since defeated — problem that allowed the destruction to continue.]”
“That’s how it started,” he continues, “but we’ve been working with local people to understand what the special environmental benefits of the mangrove are. There were large areas that had very strong degradation — that were clear-cut. But now those areas have been recovered because the local people have been replanting. I would say 90% of the recovery is done. In the whole area there is no more charcoal-making and the blast fishing has stopped.”
A documented trend
Just how the tide was turned in Koh Kong is explained in a chapter of a new book, Communities, Livelihoods and Natural Resources, edited by Stephen Tyler and published by IDRC and Intermediate Technology Publications. The book surveys the experience of a number of community-based projects across Asia that have enlisted governments and local communities as comanagers of endangered natural resources. The chapter on Koh Kong is co-authored by Nong and Melissa Marschke, a former graduate student who has been actively involved in the project since 1998 and is now an environmental studies post doctoral fellow at York University in Toronto, Canada.As Nong and Marschke make clear, the biggest challenge in Koh Kong has not been finding a technical solution to the area’s environmental woes, but rather in building social networks so that communities, local authorities, and provincial and national officials can work together. Cambodia has a very hierarchal social structure where people in positions of authority are not used to taking direction from people at the grassroots.
“When we first started talking about protecting the mangrove,” Nong elaborates, “the local authorities and most people in government said ‘this is the responsibility of the government, not local people.’ They didn’t accept that local communities should be involved in managing the coastal resources.”
Overturning war’s legacy
This longstanding exclusion of citizens from the decision-making process is further exacerbated by the psychological legacy of warfare and the genocide of the post-1975 Pol Pot regime, adds Marschke.
“When you’ve gotten through such a horrendous period and you’re coming out of a conflict situation, you tend to keep your head down and be risk-averse,” she says. “You’ve seen the consequences of speaking out in the recent past and that makes you nervous about challenging the system too much. As a result, you don’t have the kind of civil society movements in Cambodia that you’ve got in the Philippines or Thailand.”
This didn’t bode well for the future of the mangrove, since community engagement, the confidence to experiment with new ideas, and open communication between different social players were all essential preconditions to finding a pathway toward sustainable use.
Communities are central
So the PMMR team set out to improve the social climate. It attempted to build understanding between local people and all levels of government by organizing workshops and meetings, and to deepen the parties’ appreciation of what was possible by sending local authorities to Thailand to learn about mangrove management and villagers to other areas of Cambodia where community-based natural resource management projects were unfolding. It was important for the attitudes of people in the local community to change, so that they would take on more responsibility for better managing the resources upon which their livelihoods and well-being depended. Rather than asking local people to follow a blueprint drawn up elsewhere, the PMMR sought to give them the insight and skills to implement their own plan.
When a functioning partnership finally gelled, it was clear that all sides had come to appreciate the contributions of their counterparts. In 2000, the national environment minister offered a high-level stamp of approval by visiting the area. Beyond the symbolism, this official endorsement of the communities’ efforts had practical impact: in 2004, for example, the government committed itself to providing rice to local people in exchange for their work replanting the mangrove. (Marschke notes, however, that the communities’ activities have extended beyond replanting by including, for example, the implementation of a waste management system and the creation of a fish sanctuary.)
What lessons does Koh Kong’s experience hold for other areas facing similar environmental threats?
Many social complexities
On the surface, it appears that Cambodia faces a unique and particularly wide-ranging set of challenges in its quest to encourage a participatory and inclusive social response to environmental degradation. “You’ve got a post-conflict, post-colonial, post-socialist society — with lots of aid money influencing things now — so I think it’s fair to say that’s a fairly complex landscape,” says Marschke.On the other hand, Gary Newkirk, a professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada believes that “all situations are unique, all situations are different, but they all have some elements that are transferable to other contexts.” An IDRC-supported network of community-based natural resource management projects, originally based at Dalhousie but since moved to the Philippines, has been working for years to draw out elements that are common to different projects. “It’s clear when researchers from different projects get together,” says Newkirk, “they are sifting all the time for things that will work at home. That kind of work has been to everyone’s benefit.”
Marschke similarly believes that the hard-won successes in Koh Kong can prove instructive elsewhere within Cambodia, where an abundance of community-based natural resource management projects have recently sprouted.
The elements of success
Partly, she explains, these projects have proliferated because an ongoing decentralization of government services has allowed for the creation of a clear legal framework under which community initiatives can operate. This decentralization has been encouraged by the international donor organizations that have been involved — on a grand scale — with Cambodia’s reconstruction since the 1990s. Decentralization is also a principle promoted through the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
The Canadian academic believes that the PMMR can shed substantial light on what can make a community-based natural resource management project successful. Perhaps most importantly, she says, Koh Kong shows that it is important to have a long-term commitment — to take the time to ensure that communities have a sense of “ownership” of the project and that local and national governments and international collaborators take on roles that support the communities’ work but don’t drive the process.
There is a deep and heartfelt commitment to restore the mangrove in Koh Kong, says Marschke. “The norms have been changed in terms of what’s acceptable and what’s not,” she elaborates. “Most people don’t feel comfortable to go out and blast fish anymore. People don’t feel comfortable dumping their waste in the water — they are thinking about waste management systems, and that’s been another major outcome in the villages, actually. The way of living has shifted toward something that is healthier and more sustainable, and people have internalized the idea that they can determine what the state of their environment will be.”
Stephen Dale is an Ottawa-based writer.
Contact information:
Brian Davy, Senior Program Specialist, RPE (Rural Poverty and Environment), IDRC, PO Box 8500, Ottawa, ON, Canada, K1G 3H9; Tel.: 613-236-5247, ext. 2540; Email: bdavy@idrc.ca
Kim Nong, Deputy Director, Ministry of the Environment, Cambodia. Tel.: 855-23-214108; Fax: 855- 23-214108; Email: pmmr@online.com.kh
Melissa Marschke, Post Doctoral Fellow,York University, Toronto, 270 York Lanes, 4700 Keele St., Toronto, ON Canada, M3J 1P3; Tel.: 416- 736-2100, ext 4406; Email: mmarschkeca@yahoo.com
Gary Newkirk, Marine Affairs Program, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, B3H 3H9; Tel.: 902-494-2284; Fax: 902- 494-1001; Email: gary.newkirk@dal.ca.
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