Working in partnership with grass roots groups, local governments and international organizations to build just, prosperous and democratic societies.
EWMI Biodiversity Protection Program
Cambodia is a treasure trove of natural resources and diverse ecosystems. These ecosystems are now under serious threat from rich, powerful developers who are rapidly transforming Cambodia’s forests into plantations and mining operations. Unbridled exploitation of natural resources also threatens the economic and social fabric of Cambodia’s forest dependent communities, especially its indigenous minorities.
In recent years, Cambodian village communities have become more vocal in opposing developments such as plantations, mining concessions, and hydropower dams. Networks of community activists have helped to maintain community access to local fisheries, have stopped the granting of all logging concessions in Cambodia, and have forced the most powerful Cambodian companies to back away from planned plantation projects.
These community-based initiatives represent one of the greatest hopes for change in Cambodia. Recognizing this, in October 2007, USAID provided EWMI with funding to create a unique biodiversity protection program built upon the grassroots human rights initiatives EWMI had supported in the past through PRAJ. The main objective of the program is to improve the natural resource management of some of Cambodia’s most threatened, biodiverse ecosystems. It proceeds from the premise that the people most able and most motivated, to protect and manage these precious forest resources are the people whose livelihoods and cultural survival depend upon them.
Focus Areas
The EWMI program focuses attention on four large, biodiverse areas that cover a number of provinces in Cambodia. These are:
• Prey Lang Forest: Under threat from mining, anarchic logging, plantations and other economic land concessions (including biofuel projects), planned social land concessions, poaching, and hydropower dams on the Mekong.
• Phnom Aurel: Under threat from anarchic logging, plantations and other economic land concessions, poaching, and resort development, including a golf course. Dams planned south and west of the area are also significant threats as they will flood large parts of protected areas.
• Mondulkiri: Under threat from gold mining, bauxite mining, plantations, land grabbing, poaching.
• Rattanakiri: Under threat from gold mining, border development, hydropower dams, industrial plantations, anarchic logging.
EWMI’s Approach
EWMI’s Biodiversity program employs a three-pronged approach to build better biodiversity management: grassroots advocacy support, national network building and legal advocacy support.
Grassroots Advocacy Support
First and foremost, EWMI works with local people to help them organize and mobilize their communities to protect forests, while at the same time protecting their land and natural resource rights. This approach promotes community-owned and community-farmed buffer zones, in which communities are also engaged in forest protection and sustainable management activities. At the local level, EWMI does this by providing grant funding to local grassroots NGOs that have day-to-day contact with community members.
EWMI currently funds four local NGOs working with communities in the focus areas. These are: Buddhism for Progressive Society (BPS) in western Prey Lang, Community Economic Development (CED) in eastern Prey Lang and Mondulkiri, Dey Ku Aphiwat (DKA) in the Phnom Aural area, and Indigenous Community Support Organization (ICSO), in Rattanakiri. These NGOs work with other small local groups, such as EHE, KABB and New Vision, to ensure adequate community outreach and cooperation.
In addition, PRAJ partner, Khmer Youth and Social Development (KYSD) supports youth volunteers and youth mobilizing in three communes. EWMI also provides targeted technical assistance to the NGOs and to the forest communities. This assistance includes peer coaching in grassroots advocacy techniques, education in wildlife conservation, forest resource monitoring, planning for forest protection and management, and land and resource rights education.
EWMI is also helping the communities share their experiences by supporting the creation of ‘community media.’ This means helping ordinary people in the community create slide shows, videos and popular entertainment – with a message. The aim is to increase information sharing between communities, strengthen community identity, and provide villagers an opportunity to reach broader audiences in their advocacy.
National Networking and Advocacy
In addition to broadening civic participation and environmental advocacy at the community level, EWMI works closely with an emerging national network – the Community Peacebuilding Network – to make the voice of Cambodia’s poor heard at the national level. This national network includes five regional networks and has members living in many of Cambodia’s land dispute “hotspots.” Network members have represented their concerns to important international advocates, including Yash Ghai, UN Special Envoy for Human Rights, Hina Jilani, UN Special Rapporter for Human Rights Defenders, and Miloon Kitari, UN Special Rapporter for Housing Rights. They have advocated on environmental and land rights issues to the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the Mekong River Commission. Most importantly, they frequently engage with government officials- from village chiefs to parliamentarians, and represent their concerns regarding the exploitation of Cambodia’s land and natural resources.
The network is currently conducting a national petition campaign calling for the withdrawal of illegal economic land concessions and the proper application of the law to protect natural resource rights. They are also working on complaints against economic land concessions across the country, including the country’s largest concession in Kampong Chhnang and Pursat, a significant threat to the biodiversity of the Aural area. The national network is supported by a EWMI-PRAJ grant to Community Capacities for Development.
Legal Advocacy Support.
As part of EWMI-PRAJ’s wide human rights and rule of law portfolio, EWMI provides funding to the majority of legal aid NGOs operating in Cambodia. EWMI works with two of these NGOs, the Center for Legal Education in Cambodia (CLEC) and Legal Aid of Cambodia (LAC), developing and supporting ‘high impact litigation’ teams capable of assisting whole communities engage in multi-faceted advocacy campaigns to defend their land rights.
CLEC and LAC are currently representing the villagers of Kong Yu, Jarai people from Rattanakiri Province, who are attempting to recover ancestral land stolen from them by a rich relative of highly placed government officials. With the help of the public interest lawyers, the villagers have made Kong Yu a focus of national and international attention and a cause celebre for those fighting against land grabbing by the rich and powerful at the expense of the poor and powerless. The villagers and lawyers built and filed a legal case in provincial court and have managed an increasingly complex media and public relations campaign. In December 2007, Yash Ghai, the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative for Human Rights in Cambodia, visited the village and later told the press that the Kong Yu case exemplifies human rights trends in Cambodia, especially in regards to the deep-seated patronage networks and the failure of the courts to provide adequate means of redress for ordinary citizens. He expressed particular concern for indigenous communities saying, “Unless active steps are taken, they will become victims of the market and political corruption.”
Land Rights Database
In addition to supporting NGOs that provide legal representation in land rights cases, PRAJ is funding the creation of a National Land Dispute Database by NGO Forum. NGO Forum is a consortium of local and international NGOs which share information and advocate on priority issues affecting Cambodia’s development. The aim of the program is to improve the accuracy and scope of data collection on land and forestry disputes in order to better inform land rights advocates, government officials, and the public as to the true nature and extent of land conflict in Cambodia.
Prey Lang Forest – Cambodia’s Biodiversity Centerpiece
The magnificent Prey Lang Forest sits in the middle Cambodia, and is the largest lowland evergreen forest in mainland Southeast Asia. It has never been formally surveyed, primarily because logging concessions enclose its entire area and the Cambodian government has not given permission for surveys.
A large core area of Prey Lang has never been logged. The forest is known to be home to elephants, gaurs, bantengs, and tigers, among other species, and has unique ecosystems such as swamp forests. Communities tap resin throughout the forest.
Since 2003 the logging concessions have not been operational, in part as a result of large scale resistance by communities all around Prey Lang and elsewhere, but they remain on paper. With the concessions inactive, communities around Prey Lang (many of them indigenous) have undertaken patrolling activities in cooperation with commune authorities and have continued to push for the cancellation of the concessions. They have also begun to propose alternative management systems for the forest, proposing to make the forest core off-limits to all logging and agricultural activities, use of trucks or tractors, and construction of roads. They have also proposed strict enforcement of laws prohibiting hunting and trapping of wildlife. Around the periphery of Prey Lang, communities have attempted to stop the collection of monkeys, which is done by clearing the forest around the trees in which they sleep then cutting down those trees and catching the monkeys in nets. Increasingly, these communities see protection of wildlife and unique ecosystems as a key part of their advocacy strategy to protect Prey Lang forest.
Since the biodiversity program began, EWMI has been helping communities in and around Prey Lang responsibly manage their forests and advocate for the recognition and protection of their land and natural resource rights. Dozens of communities throughout Prey Lang are now regularly discussing forest management concerns, patrolling their own forest area, planning local advocacy strategies, beginning to produce community media, and designing their own conservation surveys and calendars to describe and monitor biodiversity in their areas, identify threats to the biodiversity, and take measures to better protect it.
Project Director:
Nicolas Mansfield
nmansfield_at_ewmi.org
Project Manager:
Terry Parnell
tparnell_at_ewmi-praj.org
Main Office:
575 Madison Avenue, 25th Fl.
New York, NY 10022
Tel (212) 843-7660
Fax. (212) 843-1485
info_at_ewmi.org
Washington, DC Office:
110 Maryland Avenue NE
Suite 511
Washington, DC 20002
Tel. (202) 544-9345
Fax. (202) 544-9348
info_at_ewmi.org
Website: www.ewmi.org
CONTACT:
The East-West Management Institute, Inc. qualifies as a tax-exempt public charity under Section 501(c)(3) of the US Internal Revenue Code as amended.
