CDRI

This paper uses four years of panel data on 793 households collected during 2001–11 to measure chronic poverty in rural Cambodia and to identify its key determinants. A household ealth index—a proxy for long-term welfare—constructed by polychoric principal component analysis is used as welfare indicator. Both ordered logistic and multinomial logistic regression odels are adopted to identify the causes of chronic and transient poverty by focusing particularly on five explanatory variables: agricultural land and livestock, demography, human apital, social capital and natural resources.

This paper focuses on contemporary issues of climate change and agricultural development in Cambodia, drawing on information gathered from literature review, field observations and dialogues, as well as two provincial consultation workshops on technical and  policy recommendations. It also reflects on current agricultural practices and agricultural technology in determining potential national production so as to ensure food security and poverty alleviation.

Environment and poverty nexus is still a polemical issue. Some schools of thought claim that it is poverty that has the major effect on the environment, while another perspective suggests that the environment has more impact on the poor than vice-versa because the poor have no power to exploit the environment. In the context of Cambodia, there is a general consensus that the poor, particularly those living in rural areas, are heavily dependent on the environment i.e. common property resources. If the environment is degraded, the livelihoods of those people will definitely be severely affected.