Community Forestry As A Tool For Sustainable Forest Management And Rural Poverty Reduction In Cambodia
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Date
2012
Authors
Ty, Sokhun
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Abstract
As rural poverty persists, and deforestation and forest degradation continue, the trend of managing the forest has advanced from centralized or state managed to decentralized and community-based management. Innovative approaches, such as community forestry (CF), play an important role in supporting livelihood and the sustainable forest management. Community Forestry (CF) was launched in Cambodia to address the growing poverty in the rural areas. This study is aimed at investigating the performance of community forestry in alleviating poverty among the CF members in Cambodia. It seeks to evaluate the conditions of the implementation of community forestry in Cambodia and the effect of the factors in its implementation. The relationship between the population growth in the rural areas, sustainable management of the forest resources and poverty reduction in Cambodia is also being examined as well as the factors that affect the poverty reduction. More specifically, the study will determine the factors influencing the effectiveness of community based sustainable forest management approaches in reducing poverty in Cambodia. Six research questions were posed and six hypotheses were tested in this study. A total of 399 CF member households participated with an equivalent number of non-CF member household respondents. A total of 914 household respondents were interviewed from the 88 community forestry sites in Cambodia.
Overall, the results of the study indicated that Community Forestry offers an effective means of conserving the forest resources. The spatial data indicated that forest covers are significantly intact in areas covered by the community forestry compared to its adjoining areas. The CF has demonstrated to reduce the rate of deforestation in the CF areas compared to the areas outside the CFs. The data also showed that there is significantly lower poverty incidence among the CF members compared to those who are non-CF members. Whereas the data pointed to the positive contribution of CF in alleviating poverty, the results of the study showed limited contribution of the forest to the livelihoods and income of the households. Nonetheless, despite
the limited income from the forest, the households attached a very high importance value to the forest resources they are protecting.
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Keywords
Community forestry as a tool for sustainable forest management , and rural poverty reduction in Cambodia