Wat doet CPADO? engels artikel voor VSO

So.. What would you do if you wake up and they´ve torn your house down?

Well, I would be pretty angry to start of with. Sue these guys!
That´s not an emotion we see displayed any longer by a lot of the landless and homeless people we meet around the Phnom Aural sanctuary. Theirs is sooner the look of passive desperation. They don´t lose time on lengthy accusations either. To make a livelihood, to have food and shelter, immediate action needs to be taken. So, what do you do?

Visiting the Phnom Aural sanctuary with the rangers gives a great insight in some of the problems challenging the co-management of protected areas in Cambodia. I´m Gina, the freshly imported VSO management and communication advisor to the Community Protected Areas Development Office. I´m the lucky one getting this chance to leave my bed at 5.30 a.m, spend my day cramped in between 3 people on the backseat of a 4-wheel drive that is trying to do rock ´n roll over bad roads and steep bridges. And the rewards are great. We get to speak to the community leader and visit the ranger station. We explore the situation on illegal logging. We see the first building-efforts by new families that have moved in to the sanctuary. Together with our counterpart from Flora and Fauna International we hear what kind of support is needed and discuss what the future of this sanctuary might look like.

So. Imagine you live in a community close to a Forest and Wildlife-sanctuary. Because of a foreign company that has bought the rights to build a dam in the part of the river you live at, you lose your house and your land. The only place that is near enough and has room to build a house is the sanctuary. Out there is an opportunity to live of non-timber forestry collection, you can do some seasonal work on the ricefield and maybe make some of the charcoal to sell to the traders in Phnom Penh. There´s just a few minor problems. You´re not allowed to build a new house in the sanctuary, you can´t move in with the community and you´re definitely not meant to cut down trees to use in any commercial activity! You look at your wife and children and think: “ What the heck… I´ll give it a try anyway”, put the family on your oxcart and scoot up the road into the forest to claim yourself a little space in a corner somewhere out of the way. So far so good. There´s loads of wood to build your house with and -as it seems- no curious visitors bother you. That is.. until it get´s dark. In the dark big trucks pull up with the logo of a Chinese logging firm on the side, the chainsaws make your little hut tremble with noise and the few big trees left get cut down or damaged beyond repair. When you go out to complain about the noise these guys get really aggressive and pull a knife on you! They just get on with logging the remaining resin trees and don´t stop till daybreak. So that -next to ruining your sleep- ruins your plans to tap resin for the next day! In the midst of all this some representatives from the community you live close to, working as parttime rangers, start to knock on your door. If you don´t abide by their rules and come and live within the established boundaries they threaten to burn your house down. Mmmm.. Maybe not such a great plan to move here after all. Maybe discussing this step with the community chief would have been better.

In finding a sustainable way to manage a protected area the CPAD office, and the NGO-s it works with, tries to strike a balance with reality. Theoretically it might seem best to close off the sanctuary to people entirely. Just put a big gate around it and have it guarded against illegal logging or hunting. But that´s not going to work in the long run. In real life this sanctuary is the basic source of income for the nearby communities. We shouldn´t be too sentimental about this. A lot of communities haven´t existed in the same place even 20 years after the mass-movement of people under Khmer rouge. But still, there are those whose traditions, religion and social structure is firmly tied to the surrounding area. So, to deny the people in a community access is to deny them to make a living.

After trying to centrally run the protected areas the government has started to see that the strict way may not be the best way to save Cambodia´s flora & fauna. So here comes the Community Protected Areas Development Office (since 1996) in to play. First meant to facilitate the development of co-management of these areas with stakeholders at the provincial and communal level. And secondly, very urgent at the moment, to use the lessons learned in the development of practical policies (Prakas) that can be enforced and will stop the devastation that commercial logging and professional hunting are causing. Not an easy mission. But it is essential to work with the communities to effectively manage these areas. Thinking of the guy you just imagined to be, you can see why. O.k. this story is a bit sensational, not always is there so much violence involved, but the issues are genuine. At one side there´s a developing country, under pressure with the growth of a population in need of a livelihood. This means that they will want to make charcoal from wood to sell on the market, they need wooden furniture and wood to build their houses and so on, and so forth. More people need more land to live on and there´s no solid social rules or well defined policies to stop them from moving into protected areas. The one with the power is the one in charge, and for the longest time this has not been in the public interest! In order to save Cambodia´s national heritage, to protect the indigenous flora & fauna and find ways to build on eco-tourism as an attractive new market, there´s a lot of work to be done.at grassroots level. Building capacity, awareness and administrative structures that can actually implement the policies and safeguard their enforcement in the field.

If there´s one thing the trip to Phnom Aural has made clear it´s this: the challenge of co management of protected areas is not a question of making choices by the government, it´s about giving people in a community a choice. When we find ways to help them develop a livelihood, we will find the best ways to build sustainable protected areas.


A house in the making in Phnom Aural