Understanding Changes in Land and Forest Resource Management Systems: Ratanakiri, Cambodia(<Special Issue>Land Use Changes in the Uplands of Southeast Asia: Proximate and Distant Causes)

Abstract

This paper draws on case studies from three communities in Ratanakiri to illustrate both the forces drivingland-use and tenure change as well as how effective community stewardship can guide agricultural transitions.The study combines a time series of remotely sensed data from 1989 to 2006 to evaluate changesin land use, and relates this data to in-depth ground truth observations and social research from threevillages. The methodology was designed to evaluate how indigenous communities who had historicallymanaged forest lands as communal resources, are responding to market forces and pressures from landspeculators. Krala Village received support from local non-government organizations (NGOs) to strengthencommunity, map its land, demarcate boundaries, strengthen resource use regulations, and develop land-useplans. The two other villages, Leu Khun and Tuy, each received successively less support from outsideorganizations for purposes of resource mapping and virtually no support for institutional strengthening.The remote sensing data indicates that in Krala, over the 16 year study period, protected forest areasremained virtually intact, while total forest cover declined at an annual rate of only 0.86% whereas in LeuKhun and Tuy the annual rates were 1.63 and 4.88% respectively.