Over the past two decades electricity access in Cambodia has increased considerably. The Electricity Authority of Cambodia has announced that the country expanded energy access from 34% in 2010 to 98% by mid-2022, but that 245 villages still lack access to the national distribution network due to their remoteness. For some of these villages, off-grid renewable energy systems have played a significant role in providing electricity access. However, connecting villages to the grid or providing them with off-grid renewable energy is not enough to overcome energy poverty and achieve people's well-being. In this paper we apply a power-capabilities-energy justice framework to analyse social justice concerning renewable energy and energy poverty in remote communities. Based on primary data collected through interviews and focus group discussions, and using a social network analysis (SNA) we approach capabilities and energy poverty in Cambodia as a relational process and we provide for the first time a through picture of social and power relations in the Cambodian energy sector. Our study finds that communities and vulnerable groups such as female-headed households, located in remote rural areas are suffering distributional energy injustice in that they have access to a limited range of energy services to fulfil basic capabilities, such as being in good health, being educated and socially connected. We also find that distributional energy injustice is closely connected to power relations and relationality aspects of the Cambodian energy sector, as well as a lack of recognition of different vulnerabilities in energy policies.

The escalating climate change-related disasters around the world are a serious threat to human existence and human livelihoods. Rural people living in developing countries, especially those of the poorest, are believed to be particularly vulnerable to climate change. As the number of climate change programs designed to help the poorer households has grown, concern has also arisen over their ability to participate and the extent to which they benefit from those programs. There is limited documented evidence on whether climate change intervention programs have supported communities to become resilient to climate change or to recover from extreme events. This case study focuses on a pilot project called ‘Climate Proofing Integrated Rural Community Development in Kampong Svay district, Kampong Thom province’, designed to deal with water shortage, lack of sanitation issue, and food supply, by building climate-resilient infrastructure: construction of wells, water collection tanks, latrines, and home gardens. The results show that four factors are hindering the poor and other vulnerable beneficiaries from getting benefits from the intervention program: lack of family labor for the elder, extreme heat, different priorities such as waning commitment from poor households, and lack of financial and technical support.

AbstractTropical forests significantly contribute to local livelihoods as well as global carbon storage and biodiversity conservation. Therefore, a strategy that harmonizes a better quality of life for local people with tropical forest conservation is required. In Community-based ecotourism (CBET), the local community participates in related economic activities. In this chapter, we summarize our current studies that quantified the contribution of CBET to the income and livelihoods of local people and forest conservation. We selected the Chambok CBET site in Cambodia for our case study. First, we quantified the effectiveness of CBET in forest conservation by analyzing forest cover change with published maps created from satellite images. Second, we evaluated the contribution of CBET to household income and livelihood changes through a household survey using a questionnaire. Analysis of the forest cover change maps revealed that deforestation had significantly decreased inside the CBET area as compared to outside it, although the reduction was not enough to stop net deforestation. The survey revealed that the total monthly income of CBET member households and non-CBET households was not significantly different. It also showed that the community members felt the livelihood change after the implementation of CBET. However, this change may have been caused by general socioeconomic changes in Cambodia. We conclude that CBET effectively contributed to forest conservation but in a limited capacity to household income.

Community-based ecotourism (CBET) has long been considered an effective natural resource governance policy for both forest conservation and livelihood improvement in developing countries around the world. Cambodia is no exception. The Cambodian government has been promoting and establishing CBET sites countrywide. Preah Nimith CBET, located in a remote part of north Cambodia, is in the vicinity of a protected area, mountains and the Mekong River, near the Cambodia-Laos border. Although this CBET venture has been established for nearly a decade, it remains a little-known tourist destination among both local and foreign visitors. Like many established CBET ventures in Cambodia, Preah Nimith CBET can sustain its activities but cannot move to the next level of improvement in terms of organisation, eco-tourism packages, facilities and infrastructure. This qualitative study draws on information collected from consultative meetings with CBET members, local authorities, Provincial Department of Tourism staff, and NGO staff in Preah Vihear province. The study found that to improve its management practices, Preah Nimith CBET needs 1) sustained technical and financial supports, and capacity building on ecotourism, preferably provided by specialised NGOs or international organisations, 2) improved roads and other basic infrastructure such as piped water supply, electricity supply and sanitation services, 3) publicity through awareness-raising campaigns, and 4) networking with nearby CBET communities in Preah Vihear and Stung Treng provinces.

Considerable proportions of the remaining global forest areas are currently harboured in tropical countries. Reducing deforestation in this region is important to help mitigate climate change. Effective forest conservation approach is needed to reduce deforestation and degradation in these countries. Here, we investigated the forest conservation effect of community forests and protected areas using country scale data in Cambodia. In addition to these two forest conservation approaches, we also evaluated the effectiveness of protected forests, which are similar to protected areas but managed by different authorities. We compared deforestation between 2006 and 2016 in areas under the three forest conservation approaches and a non-conserved area by applying the inverse probability of treatment weighting with the propensity score minimizing confounding effects. The results showed that community forest, protected areas, and protected forest significantly decreased deforestation compared with non-conserved forests. Out of the three forest conservation approaches, protected forest was the most effective and community forest was the least effective. We conclude that all of the policies we evaluated are effective for forest conservation but the effectiveness varies depending on the approach. Our findings also suggest that the authority managing the given approach plays an important part in its effectiveness.

Summary Increasing attention has been given to evaluating the effectiveness of forest conservation projects, but it is not well known whether different methods yield similar results when evaluating changes in forest resources. The present study compares forest cover maps and local people’s perceptions for evaluating the effectiveness of the Chambok community-based ecotourism (CBET) programme in Cambodia. We assessed forest cover changes from 2000 to 2012 using published global maps and used a covariate matching method to compare forest sites in CBET and non-CBET areas. We also analysed local people’s perceptions of forest resource changes by interviewing 174 households. The forest cover maps showed that the Chambok CBET was effective at reducing deforestation, although the outcome was not completely robust to unobserved heterogeneity. Local people’s perceptions concurred with the effectiveness observed in the forest cover maps, in that 64% of the people perceived that forest resources increased and 75% thought that the local community could protect its own forest resources. We conclude that the Chambok CBET performed effectively for forest conservation and suggest that mixed-method approaches are essential for evaluating the effectiveness of conservation programmes.

Community forestry (CF) is increasingly used in developing countries to achieve both the socioeconomic outcome of poverty reduction and an ecological outcome. There have been many single case studies in a specific region to identify the factors affecting the success or failure of CF. Other studies have used large-N data collected from multiple countries. However, there is a dearth of large-N studies within a single country. In this study, we used a country scale dataset of 197 CF projects, established between 1994 and 2005 across Cambodia, to identify the biophysical factors that affected forest cover changes from 2005 to 2016. A mixed-effects logistic regression model was used for a total of 71,252 randomly sampled data pixels nested in the 197 CF. Results showed that deforestation in CF was likely to increase with increasing size of CF area at lower elevations and on gentler slopes. Deforestation also increased if CF was located close to villages, markets and CF boundaries, but further away from main roads. These findings on biophysical factors can help the government to decide on priority locations for further conservation interventions or for the establishment of new CF projects.

Community-based ecotourism (CBET) has become a popular tool, especially in developing countries, for biodiversity conservation and livelihood improvement, but there is a lack of studies that use quantitative data to evaluate the effectiveness of CBET using a before-after-control-intervention (BACI), BA, or CI design. We conducted a case study of the flagship Chambok CBET program in Cambodia to quantify the contribution of CBET to household income and livelihood changes for CBET and non-CBET members. We conducted an interview survey of 173 households (77 CBET and 96 non-CBET members) that were selected systematically from every two households along roads within the same villages. There was no significant difference between the total income of member and non-member households; the median CBET income was 1.22 USD per month, which is only 1.65% of the total income. The inequality of income from CBET among the CBET members was higher than that from other income sources. The perceptions of livelihood changes differed considerably before and after the establishment of the Chambok CBET program, although this difference was not attributed to CBET but rather to general socioeconomic changes in the country. We conclude that it is challenging to employ CBET to achieve poverty reduction and livelihood improvement.

Given the opportunities offered by foreign investment in energy infrastructure mostly by Chinese firms, the Government of Cambodia is giving high priority to developing hydropower resources for reducing energy poverty and powering economic growth. Using a “Political ecology of the Asian drivers” framework, this paper assesses China’s involvement in the development of large dams’ in Cambodia and its impacts on the access of natural resources such as water and energy by dam builders, local communities and the government. This analysis is based on 61 interviews and 10 focus group discussions with affected communities, institutional actors, Chinese dam builders and financiers in relation to the first large Chinese dam built in Cambodia: the Kamchay dam. Based on the results of the analysis this paper makes recommendations on how to improve the planning, implementation and governance of future large dams in Cambodia.

Natural resource depletion, global warming, and climate change have all now come to the forefront of development agendas across the globe. There is a growing consensus at all levels that environmental sustainability should be given top priority in the future development agenda. As a small developing country in Southeast Asia, Cambodia is highly vulnerable to the adverse effects of global warming and climate change. Recognizing this, Cambodia is committed to making sustainability an integral part of its development agenda. This is articulated in Cambodia's Country Report for the 2012 Earth Summit. The Green Growth Roadmap, the National Policy and Strategic Plan on Green Growth, and Green Growth Master Plan that is being developed to operationalize the Green Growth Roadmap will integrate sustainability in the country's development plans and policies. The named programs are expected to align all the relevant ministries, development partners, academia, and civil society more generally to cooperate in addressing the challenges of sustainability. This chapter examines the extent to which sustainability is at present incorporated in Cambodia's higher education system and identifies the constraints that need to be addressed in the future. The chapter's focus is mostly on the universities – the key institutions in the country's education system.

Given the opportunities offered by foreign investment in energy infrastructure mostly by Chinese firms, the Government of Cambodia is giving high priority to developing hydropower resources for reducing energy poverty and powering economic growth. Using a Political ecology of the Asian drivers framework, this paper assesses China's involvement in the development of large dams' in Cambodia and its impacts on the access of natural resources such as water and energy by dam builders, local communities and the government. This analysis is based on 61 interviews and 10 focus group discussions with affected communities, institutional actors, Chinese dam builders and financiers in relation to the first large Chinese dam built in Cambodia: the Kamchay dam. Based on the results of the analysis this paper makes recommendations on how to improve the planning, implementation and governance of future large dams in Cambodia.

More than 2 million hectares of Cambodian land have been leased to investors since 2000. Combined satellite and local records show that deforestation on leased land is 29% to 105% higher than in comparable unleased areas. Investment in agricultural land in the developing world has rapidly increased in the past two decades1,2,3. In Cambodia, there has been a surge in economic land concessions, in which long-term leases are provided to foreign and domestic investors for economic development. More than two million hectares4 have been leased so far, sparking debate over the consequences for local communities and the environment5. Here we combined official records of concession locations4,6 with a high-resolution data set of changes in forest cover7 to quantify the contribution of land concessions to deforestation between 2000 and 2012. We used covariate matching to control for variables other than classification as a concession that may influence forest loss. Nearly half of the area where concessions were granted between 2000 and 2012 was forested in 2000; this area then represented 12.4% of forest land cover in Cambodia. Within concessions, the annual rate of forest loss was between 29% and 105% higher than in comparable land areas outside concessions. Most of the deforestation within concessions occurred after the contract date, and whether an investor was domestic or foreign had no effect on deforestation rates. We conclude that land acquisitions can act as powerful drivers of deforestation.

Hydropower investment is a priority in many developing countries, as a means to increase electrification rates and promote national development. However, neglect of dam-affected people's needs, can make them vulnerable to the multifaceted impacts of such projects. Using the case of Cambodia's first large dam, the Kamchay dam, this paper reveals social priorities of affected communities and institutional actors linked to environmental and social implications of large hydropower projects using a preference ranking method. Qualitative research revealed concerns among dam-affected communities which included energy access, livelihood changes, environmental impacts, access to natural resources and compensation. Results also reveal divergence between national and local priorities, which in turn brings about an unequal distribution of costs and benefits of the Kamchay Dam between urban and rural areas. The paper provides recommendations to policy-makers, NGOs and international organizations regarding governance issues, consultation processes and mitigation measures.