Flood Forests, Fish, and Fishing Villages - Tonle Sap Cambodia: Community Forest Management Trends in Cambodia

The study describes the experiences of Kompong Phluk, a Khmer community that has been attempting to protect its flood forests and fishing grounds for the past fifty years. The authors examine how the community, assisted by the FAO project, has developed a resource management organization, formulated rules and regulations, sought government approval, and designed a comprehensive resource management plan. The report also details some of the challenges and issues that they have faced in the process. The report begins with a brief description of the history of the Tonle Sap, its biophysical setting, and traditional resource use practices, then discusses how the community has moved to formalize indigenous forest management systems by building on national policy reforms that are shifting authority for commercial fishing grounds around the Great Lake from private sector control to community management. This process of formalizing resource management systems is being facilitated through the FAO project. The steps involved in developing and operationalizing the formal management plan include meetings with stakeholders, participatory diagnostic assessments, analyses workshops, boundary demarcation, formulations of rules and regulations, management plan formulations, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation. This report describes how these activities were implemented in Kompong Phluk, and their prospects for further extension around the Great Lake and Tonle Sap River.

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