Executive Summary

To target Cambodia’s highest value and most threatened forest areas as management priorities, it is necessary to make distinctions among forest landscapes. This study defines Cambodia’s evergreen and semi-evergreen areas as “high value forests” (HVFs) because, compared to other forests, evergreen and semi-evergreen tend to offer greater commercial potential for logging interests, hold higher levels of biodiversity, and provide higher proportions of forest product income to local communities. Given the high commercial value, it is not surprising that evergreen and semi-evergreen areas face a greater threat of deforestation than other forest types. Indeed, commercial logging has sharply reduced the amount and quality of these forests across much of Southeast Asia.

Evergreen and semi-evergreen forests represent about half of Cambodia’s forest cover area, with approximately 90 percent located in 11 provinces in the north-central, northeastern, and southwestern regions of the country. Almost all of these forests are in concessions, cancelled concessions, or protected areas. Although the production and protection classifications suggest nearly all HVFs are to be managed for commercial or conservation purposes, it should be remembered that many Cambodians live in these forest areas and depend on their resources. Within the 11 top forested provinces, there are 2,000 villages located within 5 km of evergreen and semi-evergreen forest. The total population in these villages is about 1.4 million people or 12 percent of the national population and many of these people are likely to have forest-dependent livelihoods.

With a focus on communities living in HVF areas, this study seeks to improve knowledge about the magnitude and characteristics of forest dependence, the status of key forest resources and competition for these resources, and the relationship between actual local use/management and official rules and regulations. In addition, a number of management scenarios are analysed to shed light on how different approaches affect the amount and distribution of timber rents[1] and other logging impacts. It is hoped that a deeper understanding of these livelihood, resource, and management issues can contribute to sounder decision-making for forest sector governance and management, and provide a stronger foundation from which to explore more effective strategies for achieving poverty reduction, rural development, and biodiversity conservation.

Field research for the study was conducted in three areas of evergreen and semi-evergreen forest located in Preah Vihear, Kompong Thom, and Mondulkiri provinces. Fieldwork consisted of a household survey, key informant interviews, and an inventory of sample tree plots to assess the commercial timber potential and presence of resin trees in the area. To provide context for HVF management, a review of literature was conducted on the causes of tropical forest loss and common management responses, focusing on key drivers, themes, and dynamics with relevance in Southeast Asia and Cambodia.

Context for HVF Management

Deforestation rates from 1990-2000 worsened in all tropical regions of the world except Latin America. Asia fared worst of all, losing nearly 20 percent of natural tropical forest over the decade, compared to an average of six percent in other tropical regions. Following trends in Asia, deforestation in Cambodia has increased over the past decade. In Southeast Asia (and Cambodia), forest decline has largely been driven by the rent-seeking activities of powerful state actors and commercial timber operations. This pursuit of rents has resulted in considerable forest loss and degradation, and “opened up” remote forest areas to encroachment and conversion for agriculture.

Both conversion and degradation reduce the future productive potential of the forest and also have significant negative environmental and social impacts. These costs are often held to exceed the private benefits that can be gathered, making both clearance and degradation poor options for society as a whole. Thus alarming rates of tropical deforestation over the past few decades have inspired a range of forest management responses. All promise better management, but with differing priorities. While some approaches emphasise maintaining economic returns from the forest, others focus more on conserving biodiversity, or improving rural development and reducing poverty. In simplified form, the main approaches can be characterised as encouraging adoption of reduced-impact logging and sustainable forest management, establishing more protected areas, and expanding community forestry. In Southeast Asia (and Cambodia), as in much of the tropical world, these approaches have so far not had much success. In production forests, reduced-impact logging and sustainable management approaches remain very much the exception, not the rule. Protected areas are successful in some places, but just as often are “paper parks” with little meaningful on-the-ground protection. And community forestry has so far proven very challenging to implement effectively.

Livelihoods in Cambodia’s HVF Areas

Across the three study areas, agricultural production and forest product collection are the main sources of income. Average annual household income is highest in Kompong Thom ($538), followed closely by Mondulkiri ($499), while Preah Vihear ($342) lags behind. Forest products account for nearly half of household income (42-48 percent) in each of the three HVF areas studied. This income is generated despite the constraints on local use associated with forest concession activities, legal restrictions on some commercial activity (e.g., timber and wildlife harvests), and taxes on forest product trade that depress the prices offered to collectors/producers.

Despite the high potential economic value of HVFs (see below), the proportion of households in HVF areas that are living below the poverty line is considerably higher than Cambodia’s national average (36 percent). The situation is most dire in Preah Vihear where 86 percent of the study area households are living in poverty, compared to 59 percent in Mondulkiri, and 52 percent in Kompong Thom. For many households, daily subsistence involves two meals of rice with chili and salt. Only one village (Sam-ong in Kompong Thom) has less poverty than the national average (32 percent of households in poverty). Higher incomes in this village are largely correlated with access to productive soils for agriculture.

About three-quarters of households in HVF areas have experienced a “time of crisis” during the past five years. Most often the cause has been an illness or death in the family. In addition to health issues, villagers are vulnerable to rice deficits, resin tree losses, and debt problems. For example, about 80 percent of the households in the Preah Vihear area and half the households in Kompong Thom experienced a rice deficit in 2003. On average, these households only produced enough rice to support consumption for half of the year. Resin tree losses to logging were common throughout the study areas, with 9 percent of households reporting losses in Preah Vihear, 23 percent in Kompong Thom, and 37-50 percent in Mondulkiri.

Despite the remote location of HVF villages, most villagers have some knowledge of forestry laws and regulations. But for practical reasons, many do not agree/comply with the laws and regulations. First, while villagers tend to understand that the State legally owns the forest, most assert their claim as the rightful custodians of the forest because they live in or near the forest and have used forest resources for decades. Second, while villagers are aware of the main forestry rules – no cutting timber (using a chainsaw), no hunting wildlife, and no burning of forests – they view these rules as blunt and impractical given the basis of their livelihoods. They note that wildlife is a vital part of their diet and burning forest areas is necessary when chamkar areas require expansion.

This study found little evidence that villagers in HVF areas currently engage in forest management. With the exception of resin trees, which are managed/protected as a private asset, access to most forest resources is open to all, or at least all within the local community. Those specific rules, restrictions, or principles that do guide forest management by villagers (such as forests or pools protected by spirits) are generally too limited in scale, strength or enforceability to cope with the high and rising levels of pressure on these resources from both inside and outside the local community. Nonetheless,, with their many trips over long distances to the forest, villagers are well aware of actions taking place that damage the forest (e.g., illegal logging, hunting, and burning large areas to flush out turtles). Despite this “monitoring”, they generally do not report problems to authorities because they feel that authorities already know about the problems, enforcement is unlikely, and in some cases authorities are involved. Unless forest damage represents a direct threat to their livelihoods, villagers tend to ignore it. Such threats are most often due to logging and “land grabbing”.

For villages in HVF areas, community forestry objectives and needs differ considerably from commonly held government and NGO notions. First, whereas government and many NGOs tend to view community forestry as an approach for improving long-term management of resources that are in gradual decline, villagers usually only seek to establish community forestry in response to direct and immediate resource threats from outsiders. Second, while government and NGOs identify the main community forestry need as training and local planning assistance, villagers say their main need is for a high-level patron – someone who can make their rights to forest resources more secure and support enforcement of community forestry rules.

Lastly, government and NGOs tend to focus on forest rehabilitation in degraded areas to support subsistence (“customary use”) and some NTFP trade activities. If this focus remains, do not expect communities to take much interest in forest management, as the management benefits are usually limited. Villages seek more secure rights over richer natural forests, a reduction/revision of regulations that impose onerous taxes on the NTFP trade, and greater rights to benefit commercially from forest resources (both timber and NTFPs). Such benefits are central to the development of community forestry that is both environmentally and financially sustainable. And clearly, if local forestry activities were supported and the regulatory framework reformed, forest products could contribute an even greater share of household income and perhaps even move some villages out of poverty.

Timber Resources and Management Scenarios for HVF Areas

Timber resources in the three study areas are sufficient to support commercial harvests, with the greatest rents generated under conventional “cut and run” logging operations. Resin trees represent about half of the timber volume and rent in the Preah Vihear area (and perhaps in Kompong Thom as well), suggesting that logging operations in these areas will have great incentives to cut resin trees regardless of the legal prohibition. Such actions will significantly increase poverty in the area for more than half of the households. This income cannot easily be replaced because employment alternatives are scarce. 

Expecting logging companies to adopt sustainable forest management in the absence of strong law enforcement appears to be a non-starter, as rents fall dramatically under such an approach. No operation that can carry on with conventional logging will want to adhere to a management approach that reduces timber rents by nearly 90 percent, especially if there remain few enforced penalties for non-compliance. “Commercial” community forestry might be a more promising option for achieving sustainable management of timber resources while meaningfully contributing to poverty reduction for several reasons. For example, local communities have fewer livelihood options than outside investors and so have a stronger incentive to manage the resource for its long term potential, and they are also directly affected by some environmental and social impacts of logging, and so may seek to avoid them. For this approach to succeed in HVF areas, however, will require fundamental changes in the forestry sector toward a poverty reduction and rural development focus. It may also require legal changes to (or different interpretations of) the Forestry Law and Community Forestry Subdecree to allow communities to benefit commercially from timber resources. There will also need to be strong safeguards against the temptation for local communities to take a 'cut and stay' approach, analogous to that followed by concessionaires and driven by similar economic logic. Finally, there will need to be substantial support for community forestry development in order to overcome some of the major challenges to implementation.

Conclusions and Recommendations

With logging operations generally focused on timber “mining”, and royalty collection ineffective, forest management in Cambodia has yet to deliver the economic, conservation, and rural development benefits envisioned. Rather, the management approach in production forests has tended to marginalise local forest users and producers. Based on experiences in Cambodia and elsewhere in the region, continuation of the current commercial forestry model will result in further forest losses with little revenue generated for government. It will not lead to poverty reduction and rural development. Indeed, findings of this study suggest some commercial operations are moving villages in HVF areas further into poverty, not out of it.

Clear policy direction on priorities for management of high value (production) forests is needed. Analysis of management scenarios makes clear that short-term, direct economic rents are substantially higher under conventional logging, but it matters greatly how these rents are distributed. At present, weaknesses in royalty collection mean that the national government captures only a small fraction of timber rents. Most of the timber windfall appears to be captured by logging operations, powerful actors, and a variety of informal fee takers. Meanwhile, as this study illustrates, villagers in HVF areas are often made poorer. And most of these households are already living below the poverty line. With this in mind, a number of recommendations are highlighted below. These recommendations are based on the assumption that the most significant sites for biodiversity conservation will remain in protected areas closed to logging. With this safeguard, significant areas of HVF would still be available for other kinds of management.

1. Make poverty reduction a higher priority of HVF management.

For all the focus on the need for poverty reduction in Cambodia, there is little evidence that commercial management of HVFs is contributing much in this regard, despite HVFs being one of Cambodia’s chief national assets. In the absence of an effectively enforced legal framework, the current strategy of encouraging commercial timber operations to become responsible forest managers appears doomed to failure due to the tremendous financial incentives against it – scenario analysis suggests rents are 6-10 times higher under “cut and run” logging compared to sustainable forest management. If Cambodia is to harness its HVF resources for poverty reduction and rural development, a greater effort is needed to explore the potential of “commercial” community forestry – local forest management that involves commercial activities including modest but sustainable timber harvests. Such an approach could provide substantial revenue for local development and a steady flow of royalties for national accounts as well. Moreover, community forestry can provide villagers with greater security over the forest resources that support nearly half of their household income.

2. Improve forest management targeting, focusing first on HVFs under threat.

With limited resources available for forest management, it is important to identify clear management priorities, taking into account current value, clearance pressures and potential value of other land uses. Maps presented in this study illustrate the correlation between forest loss/disturbance and logging, (logging) roads, soil quality, and new villages in Cambodia. Forest landscapes under multiple threats are most likely to be cleared next. Due to the threat of resource loss, these are the landscapes where villagers are most likely to be motivated to establish community management. The goal of a targeting exercise would be to identify and designate a set of such forest landscapes as management priorities (e.g., HVFs with productive soil areas nearby to villages and inappropriate for conversion). To identify HVF areas specifically for community management, targeting should begin with the 2,000 Cambodian villages located within 5 km of evergreen and semi-evergreen forests, followed by an assessment of other variables (logging operations, roads, productive soils) correlated with forest loss.

3.  Prohibit commercial logging in areas of forest where resin trees represent a high proportion of standing commercial timber.

In the HVF areas studied, resin is the most significant forest product for household income. It also plays an important role in reducing the vulnerability of households to crises. Although the harvest of resin trees is prohibited under Article 29 of the Forestry Law, this may be difficult to enforce in forest areas where resin trees make up a high proportion of commercial standing timber. For instance, this study finds that resin trees represent about half the volume and rent of standing commercial timber in a sampled area of one concession, and data are presented to suggest that this is true more widely in Cambodian HVFs. Given the weaknesses of enforcement, and the enormous financial incentives to harvest resin trees, approving commercial logging plans in areas such as these will entail a very great risk of serious impacts on the livelihods of the tapping communities. Detailed mapping of areas where tapped resin trees represent a high proportion of standing timber should be undertaken, and such areas should be excluded from commercial logging for the foreseeable future, until it is sure that safeguards on the field operations of concessionaires and sub-contractors can be adequately enforced. Depending on the threshold set, such areas are likely to cover a high proportion of some concessions (including two of the three sites studied here), and may make their commercial viability doubtful.

4a. Pilot “commercial” community forestry for villages near HVF areas.

Forest products account for nearly half of household income in each of the three HVF areas studied, and these resources have the potential to contribute even more under “commercial” community forestry. Although there are numerous challenges to establishing community forestry, it must also be recognised that the impetus for greater village control of forest resources is here to stay (and consistent with Cambodia’s broader efforts toward decentralisation). Three elements that will likely be necessary for successful development of community forestry in HVFs are: (1) a clear focus on local economic benefits; (2) greater emphasis on identifying community forestry “patrons” who can ensure tenure security and enforcement and (3) safeguards to prevent 'cut and run' logging, overhunting and so on by the communities. It is recommended that these challenges should be addressed in a series of pilots to prepare the way for wider implementation.

4b.  Given the timber rents involved, target “commercial” community forestry pilots in HVF areas where indications of “political will” for it are strongest.

This study finds enormous incentives for “cut and run” logging. Capacity-building efforts and technical guidance (e.g., harvesting guidelines) do not change these incentives. Indeed, without genuine political will and strong enforcement, “cut and run” practices can be expected to continue (and even with these elements, such logging may be difficult to stop). In assessing political will for community forestry, the following indicators deserve consideration: (1) Who “owns” the initiative? (2) How much effort is being taken to understand community forestry development challenges? (3) Is the pursuit of community forestry a long-term programme or a one-shot symbolic gesture? (4) What efforts are being taken to mobilise key stakeholders, especially villagers in HVF areas? (5) Are meaningful sanctions being imposed against illegal activities in (planned) community forestry areas?