Sustainable Financing Of Protected Areas In Cambodia

Scientific Essay from the year 2009 in the subject Forestry / Forestry Economics, Wageningen University, language: English, abstract: Protected area has long history in natural reserve in Cambodia and its idea is not new to this nation. It has been introduced for not only management and conservation of ecosystem but also protection of cultural value and landscape. In 1925, 10,800 hectares of forests surrounding Angkor temple was declared as the first national park in Southeast Asia. To respond to the loss of biodiversity in the nation, conservation and management effort has been made continuously. In 1957, one third of country has been allocated into 173 forest reserves and six wildlife reserves and most of those sites currently declared as the protected areas which offer recreation services to the society along with nature conservation. The long delay of civil war caused the management of protected areas to collapse and over the past decade effort was made to restore the protected area systems into practical sense. In 1993, the King Norodom Shihanouk (Father of the present king) issued the decree on a new national protected area system. Ministry of Environment is responsible for the management and development an area of 3,327,200 ha in cooperation with Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fishery.The Royal Decree 126 on "The Creation and Designation of Protection Area" designates 23 protected areas which constitute to 19 percent of the country. In addition, four management categories was defined, namely (1) national parks, (2) wildlife sanctuaries, (3) protected landscapes, and (4) multiple-use management areas. Until February 2008, law on protected areas was approved and it defined the clear roles, obligations and authority of different stakeholders. The increase of number of fish sanctuaries and protected forest areas set up through Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fishery bring the national protected area up to 21 percent of the nation. Even though prot

It has become clear during recent global deliberations on biodiversity conservation that achieving Protected Area (PA) financial sustainability will require major changes in the way that PA funding is conceptualized, captured and used. With many, if not most, PAs facing funding crises, both in terms of the amount of funds available and how those are used, there is an urgent need to expand and diversify PA financial portfolios, and to ensure that funding reaches the groups and activities essential for biodiversity conservation. A range of innovative financing mechanisms have been developed and implemented to increase funding for PAs. This document aims to review and assess the status of a variety of these mechanisms, the major obstacles and opportunities for their implementation, and the potential for improvement.

"Sary Mom takes a deep and methodical look at the inner workings of Community Protected Areas in Cambodia. Through careful analysis of the local dynamics of the people living in the Toul Korki commune in the Peam Krasaop Wildlife Sanctuary, Sary Mom astutely assesses why some Community Protected Areas succeed while others fail to live up to their promises. Her insightful observations and recommendations offer hope that mangrove conservation can indeed coexist with secure and sustainable local livelihoods"--Page 4 of cover.

This report aims to demonstrate the compelling need to increase investments in natural capital in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) and identifies actions now being taken regionally and nationally to manage natural capital. It also proposes a guiding framework for promoting investments and actions by GMS countries to secure natural capital and thus ensure sustainable and inclusive growth in the subregion.

Written by leading authorities from Australasia, Europe and North America, this book examines the dynamic conflicts and synergies between nature conservation and human development in contemporary Cambodia. After suffering conflict and stagnation in the late twentieth century, Cambodia has experienced an economic transformation in the last decade, with growth averaging almost ten per cent per year, partly through investment from China. However this rush for development has been coupled with tremendous social and environmental change which, although positive in some aspects, has led to rising inequality and profound shifts in the condition, ownership and management of natural resources. High deforestation rates, declining fish stocks, biodiversity loss, and alienation of indigenous and rural people from their land and traditional livelihoods are now matters of increasing local and international concern. The book explores the social and political dimensions of these environmental changes in Cambodia, and of efforts to intervene in and ‘improve’ current trajectories for conservation and development. It provides a compelling analysis of the connections between nature, state and society, pointing to the key role of grassroots and non-state actors in shaping Cambodia’s frontiers of change. These insights will be of great interest to scholars of Southeast Asia and environment-development issues in general.

The basis of this book is the disparity between the science of conservation biology and the design and execution of biodiversity conservation projects in the field. The book argues for an 'evidence-based approach', drawing information from fifteen projects in the Lower Mekong regions, with the aim of allowing more effective integrated conservation projects.

This paper presents a broad overview of payments for environmental services (PES) experiences in Cambodia. First, we explore the legal and policy environment for PES, including its promotion by international donors and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and its uptake by government actors. This reveals a long-standing uncertainty over whether the government is willing to support PES, and a lack of clarity about what PES actually represents in practice. Second, taking a broad definition of PES, we examine the full range of payments-based schemes for conservation currently operating in Cambodia. These include community-based conservation agreements, direct payments for biodiversity conservation, PES schemes in the context of hydropower, and REDD+ schemes in the context of climate change mitigation. Overall, these payment schemes demonstrate mixed environmental and social effects; and they face a range of technical and practical challenges, relating to the governance context of Cambodia and difficulties in securing any ‘willingness to pay’ for environmental services beyond donor-funded schemes. More profoundly, these findings illustrate that ‘environmental services markets’ do not naturally come into being; but instead require a lot of political and discursive work, institution-building, and donor funding to become established. For this reason, we see PES succeeding only in isolated cases, with dedicated NGO-backing and the presence of niche markets. Beyond that, we observe significant challenges for PES and REDD+ in Cambodia, relating mainly to the apparent ‘state capture’ of these mechanisms. Such an outcome risks the erosion of conservation and local livelihood objectives that international donors and buyers of environmental services are seeking. It also presents the ethical problem of PES and REDD+ being absorbed into the Cambodian regime simply as adjuncts to the status quo.

This book provides holistic insights into management of protected areas across East Asia and identifies current trends in mountain tourism within the broader field of human geography and nature conservation. The book describes the diversification in visitors and expanding protected areas territories in different Asian countries during recent years. It also compares protected areas networks in the context of the changing demographic profiles of visitors and provides an interdisciplinary transnational appraisal of mountain-based tourism in Asia based on national and international statistics. The research combines specific case studies at the individual country and destination level with trans-regional trends, thereby offering analysis from both the perspective of supply (parks, protected areas, and stakeholders) and demand (mountain tourist market trends and segments). The book is a useful resource for students and academics in tourism and protected areas studies as well as social scientists and policy-makers interested in Asian countries.