OPINION: REDD+ critics: listen to the communities of the Southern Cardamoms

20 Jun 2024

Quantum Commodity Intelligence – Sokun Hort is Wildlife Alliance's community engagement manager.

I lived through the Khmer Rouge regime and the many years of war that followed it. Growing up during this terrible time for my country, I witnessed atrocities unimaginable to those who were not there. More than one in five Cambodians were murdered. I lost two of my brothers, and for three years I was forced to work in the regime's labour camps.

But through this, I gained a profound determination to fight for the rights of my people. And so in 2002, I joined Wildlife Alliance to help protect Cambodia's forests and improve the lives of the communities living within them. In 2002, rural Cambodia was like a lawless land. The war had destroyed all records of land ownership. Deforestation was rampant, and our wildlife was being slaughtered.

Extreme poverty

It was very hard for the local people. As I began to travel deeper into the Cardamom forests, I met families living in extreme poverty, who had no access to education or healthcare and whose only way to feed themselves was slash and burn agriculture. We had to help. Therefore, with support from the government, Wildlife Alliance launched an initiative to create Sovann Baitong village and implement Community Agriculture Development Project for some of the families I had met.

Initially, 70 families volunteered to join but soon more and more came from the forest, and the village grew to over 200 families. We worked to obtain the necessary approvals for social land concession for this new community, so that they had the legal right to grow crops to eat and sell to local markets in Andong Teuk and Veal Rinh.

In turn, this reduced the need to cut down trees and the nearby forests thrived too; we were advancing sustainable development, human rights and forest conservation simultaneously.

This was just the beginning. Between 2003 and 2017 we completed a similar process, called zoning, for 21 existing villages and established the Southern Cardamom REDD+ Project (SCRP).

In Cambodia, zoning is not a simple process. It involves extensive consultation with each community and the authorities, to ensure fair land allocation, respect customary rights and establish boundaries for protected forests. This can take up to three years per village. And over these years, I met with thousands of local people, working with their elected representatives to navigate the complexities of the land laws and secure community land rights.

For some villages – those in the Chhay Areng Valley where many Chorng people live – this process was even more complicated because the government planned to build a hydroelectric dam. The dam would have flooded these villages and all community members would have been forcibly displaced. But thanks to a coalition of local communities and NGOs, including Wildlife Alliance, the dam was canceled in 2015. The communities could stay and become part of the project, and the formal zoning process to recognise their rights in law could then begin.

Land titling

In total, we have now delineated and mapped community areas for 28 villages across 11 communes. This means that thanks to SCRP, the land rights of the people who live in the project zone have been fully respected. These communities – almost 6,000 families – now have access to cadastral land titling, the legal right to use the land, and are protected from illegal 'land‐grab' claims that are sadly common in Cambodia.

There is no question that these communities, including the Chorng communities in Chhay Areng, would be in a far worse state without the project's work, because with money from the sale of carbon credits, SCRP has improved peoples' lives in many ways. Over 2,000 people have access to better healthcare. Over 10,000 people have access to better education, and the project has built 43 water wells providing roughly 28,000 people with improved access to drinking water.

Last year, the project's community development and alternative livelihood programmes received over $2 million of investment, and SCRP's ecotourism initiatives have turned areas of destruction into thriving destinations - generating a further $1 million in revenue for local people since the project began.

One of the community's most cherished accomplishments is the successful implementation of the SCRP Community Scholarship programme, which has awarded 16 students with the opportunity to pursue Bachelor's Degree courses in Phnom Penh. Three of these students – Meng Minea, Hem Sunheng, and Chom Tong – have earned internships at the Embassy of the US in Cambodia, a source of great pride for both their parents, their communities and Wildlife Alliance.

Honestly, I was skeptical when I first heard the idea. In 2007, we initiated the first ecotourism initiative in Chi Phat, and I wondered if anyone would come to such a remote place. To my surprise, tourists began to arrive and brought prosperity with them. We have since opened a second initiative at Steung Areng, nine years later. Now, 215 community members are employed full-time by the SCRP.

Though there's no need to take my word for this. Listen to the communities, who regularly vote on whether to continue to support SCRP as part of Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) procedures. Just this month, secret ballots were held in villages across the project as part of the project community engagement improvement plan.

Community support

Overall, every commune saw a nearly 100% increase in community participation, with the O'Som commune, home to many Indigenous Chorng community members, seeing a 3.5x increase. More than 81% of participants voted in support of SCRP. In O'Som Commune, the project received 98% community support.

Some critics chose to ignore both the complexity of the situation on the ground and this overwhelming support, and instead attack the project because it has yet to fix all the problems that my people face.

For me, this is heartbreaking. It has been my life's work to serve the communities of the Southern Cardamoms. Those who drop in from the sky for a week or two and speak to only a few local people, can never understand Cambodia's history, our politics, or the complex realities of life here.

So to anyone who questions our work or even our motives, please come and spend time with us. See what we do firsthand, and listen to local people.

Almost every community member – over 81% – votes for the project in part because of the investment it brings to communities but also because people see that protecting the forest ensures a future for them and for their children.

Today, the Southern Cardamom forest remains for the people. Without SCRP, much of it wouldn't. And the project helps ensure the forest survives to provide for future generations. Please understand the gravity of this mission and extend your support. It makes a profound difference to the lives of the communities I work with every day.

Ultimately, lack of understanding does more harm to the forest and the people who depend on it for their livelihoods because inaccurate, ideological reporting disrupts our ability to provide support and benefits and because it ultimately slows the fight against deforestation and climate change.