Documento(s) 7 de 24

Abstract

This chapter describes the experience of introducing CBNRM in Ratanakiri province, Cambodia, through a programme of action research. The research was undertaken in close collaboration with the provincial authorities and linked to the Seila Programme of the Royal Government of Cambodia; a policy experiment on decentralized planning, management and financing of local development. The project helped the province develop procedures for participatory land-use planning, which strengthened the negotiating position of community members in land conflicts with outsiders. At the same time, it helped build the capacity of the government at the provincial and local levels for decentralized natural resource management. This led to agreements on resource management between communities and the provincial government, and to recognition of indigenous people's resource tenure and rights. This was made possible through a combination of field-level participatory action research, along with extensive cooperation with different levels of the government and networking with NGOs and other stakeholders. The strong involvement of indigenous communities in Ratanakiri province also helped the government to begin to understand issues faced by indigenous people and to respond more effectively to their development needs.

Introduction

In 1995, the provincial authorities and the indigenous communities of Oyadao district in Ratanakiri province were informed that a 20,000-ha palm oil concession had been granted by the national government in Oyadao district, which covered parts of several communes, including Somthom commune. The palm oil company started clearing the forest in Somthom and they came prepared to quell any challenge to their claim. Sara Colm recorded the experience of the villagers:

The company had no relation with people in the village and commune,' said a Som Koul resident. 'They just came here to look for workers to clear the land. Some of the supervisors were good but some were fierce and carried guns. They use guns to intimidate the people.' Another villager from Beang said, 'In the beginning of 1995, twenty company staff came here. Everyone had guns and were dressed in military uniforms. They had AK-47s and rocket launchers. They were looking for workers to cut the forest. They asked the commune to sign and thumbprint a document stating our obligation to look after our cows from roaming or they [the cows] would be shot. (Colm, 1996)

The indigenous communities in Ratanakiri were strongly affected by the government's decisions to grant land or forest concessions without local consultation or consideration of indigenous livelihoods. In the process, the traditional lands and forests of these communities were taken away and control handed to powerful domestic and foreign companies. Somthom was only one example.

Clearing forests for plantation meant clearing sacred areas and land used by shifting cultivators. This made life difficult for Somthom farmers. It was even more difficult for women who gathered forest products. As Seu Chil, a female farmer from Somthom said, 'We are highlanders: our lives depend on the forests and land. Without forests and land, we cannot live. We need firewood, vegetables, fruits, mushroom, and bamboo shoots from the forests. We see the forests as our market.'

Ratanakiri is home to indigenous ethnic minority communities who speak nine different languages. They are animists and practise shifting cultivation. Their livelihoods and culture are traditionally entwined with natural resources, which they actively manage through complex community land-use patterns (Fox, 1996). In the mid-1990s, 70 per cent of the population in Ratanakiri was indigenous. But ethnic Khmer who are Buddhist and mainly paddy (wet rice) farmers are the dominant group in Cambodia, and 98 per cent of the government staff in Ratanakiri belong to this group. The Khmer culture regards shifting cultivation and the culture of indigenous communities with suspicion. Authorities were accustomed to telling indigenous communities what to do and not listening to local, indigenous voices. Corruption was widespread and it was common for companies to offer payments to government officials for their favour. But despite these disadvantages, after three years of effort, Somthom community members were able to negotiate an agreement with the government and the concessionaire to reduce the size of the forest concession by 75 per cent and not to log any more of their forest.

The story of this accomplishment demonstrates a tremendous shift in awareness, initiative and power relations. To understand what happened in Somthom commune, it is necessary to understand the series of events, development programmes and the different projects that helped build new relationships between government agencies and community members. This case study highlights an approach to building partnerships for CBNRM. The approach is a balancing act that empowers local communities to negotiate and reinforce traditional land and forest tenure, while also building government capacity for decentralization from national to provincial and local levels.

Figure 3.1 Map showing Ratanakiri in northeast Cambodia

The context

In 1993, Cambodia held its first elections after more than 20 years of turmoil. As part of the reforms required by the international community, the government agreed to decentralize governance structures and provide more opportunities for local-level planning and decision-making. Known as the Seila Programme, the decentralization and local governance reform processes operated within the broad framework of the government of Cambodia's First Socio-economic Development Plan of 1996–2000. This started as a 'controlled policy experiment' on decentralized planning, management and funding of rural development in five provinces, including Ratanakiri. The projects were concrete investments in the rehabilitation of infrastructure, the establishment of basic services and support for economic livelihoods, but did not at the outset include natural resource management (NRM). To assist the government in implementing the Seila programme, a support project known as the Cambodian Area Regeneration and Rehabilitation project (CARERE) was formulated by UNDP. Donors have provided strong support to this approach and many donor programmes are now operating under the Seila umbrella. At the national level, the Seila Taskforce works with provincial and district governments and is the body which is primarily responsible for implementing the programme. Technical advisory teams (national and international) are employed by the UN and placed within government structures (see Figure 3.2).

In August 1995, when the Seila programme was preparing to start work in Ratanakiri, a public seminar sponsored by an international NGO opened the debate around development approaches and national policies for indigenous minorities for the first time. As a result of this seminar, the government formed a consultative committee to study issues of indigenous people and to assist in drafting appropriate policies. They emphasized the notion that indigenous people's customary rights should be respected. An international seminar on the same topic in Ratanakiri followed, allowing for strong provincial government participation. These seminars challenged the assumption that central authorities could legitimately make development decisions for indigenous areas without the consultation and participation of local communities. These notions gained public prominence and political support at the national and provincial levels, and later influenced the formulation of the land law and the forest law. In the meantime, a small provincially based research team initiated the Resource Management Policy Project in Ratanakiri with funding from the IDRC. This research activity soon merged with CARERE and became part of the Seila support project to the provincial government.

These events profoundly influenced the Seila/CARERE programme in Ratanakiri, allowing the provincial government to discuss indigenous issues more openly and take advantage of the research unit to experiment with ways to address NRM and governance for poverty alleviation. New field-based information on resource management and customary rights was produced. The provincial government was also looking for ways to gain more management control over natural resources under decentralization. However, at that time, national line ministries were granting large land and forest concessions and declaring national protected areas without consulting the provinces. Indeed, at one point the forest concessions and protected areas approved by the central government in Ratanakiri totalled 115 per cent of the province's territory (Bottomley, 2000).

Ratanakiri was considered by the national government to be rich in natural resources with a very low population, so it was viewed as a prime area for attracting investment. Because it was abundant in forest resources, logging concessions were granted readily. On its rich volcanic soils, industrial plantation concessions were approved. Whether the concessions were for logging or palm oil or rubber or other industrial crops, they fostered widespread clear-cutting of forest prior to any management plans or to plantation development. Other commercial concessions included gem mining, gold mining and fishing.

Figure 3.2 UNDP support project (CARERE) helping provincial heads and departments implement projects in response to commune development plans.
Source: Ironside and Nhem, 1998.

Communities were frequently surprised to find that their swidden fields, forests and paddy fields had fallen inside a new concession. In the case of Somthom village, drinking and irrigation water supplies were lost because of an irrigation dam built upstream. It was common for villagers to see logging trucks, guarded by armed soldiers who had been bribed by concessionaires, rolling into their villages and forests. Locals were unable to do much about this situation.

The provincial government did not receive any economic benefits from these concessions as all royalties and taxes go to the national treasury. Therefore, the Ratanakiri governor, Kham Kheun, complained, 'The provincial government must benefit from the logging concessions in order to be able to improve infrastructure in our province.' Perhaps the rampant and illegal destruction of natural resources may have influenced the government to open its doors to donor programmes that would help control such losses. At the time, CARERE project staff also felt that if the provincial government was more engaged in concession decision-making, it would be easier for communities to approach them with concerns about the consequences of large concessions.

In addition to the large-scale concessions, lowland farmers migrated to Ratanakiri in large numbers. Powerful government officials were also procuring land in Ratanakiri. The Ratanakiri CARERE programme manager, Tonie Nooyens, wrote in 1997, 'The situation in Ratanakiri is at the brink of fundamental and irreversible change in its natural and demographic environment. Commercial logging, and clearing of forests by a growing population is changing the ecological balance, triggering a process of degeneration and erosion and putting the predominantly small-holding subsistence farming systems at risk' (CARERE, 1997).

In the context of these events and policies, CBNRM action research was initiated by CARERE/Seila in 1998 to explore ways to provide communities with more secure resource tenure. These activities were initiated with the understanding that tenure security was fundamental to improved resource management, productivity and food security. In accordance with local custom, the research team focused on collective forest resource tenure. The research team attempted to:

• Formalize new collective, not individual, resource tenures (building on customary institutions);
  
  
• Build a shared understanding of how to manage and use the resources;
  
  
• Identify how to distribute benefits from the resources;
  
  
• Ensure secure long-term tenure; and
  
  
• Build provincial and local government support for community rights and the enforcement of rules and regulations.

Due to emerging governance reforms in Cambodia, the project became involved in a multilevel dialogue at the national, provincial and community levels. With the support of the project team, Somthom villagers negotiated with the provincial and national governments to reduce the concession area for the community. In this way, they were able to retain their lands and forests.

Empowering communities to negotiate land and forest tenure

The project worked at two different levels, community and provincial. At the community level, rights awareness and empowerment were considered vital starting points because initial contacts with villagers showed they felt helpless to control the destruction of their forest and other resources. They were used to accepting orders from the military and provincial authorities. 'Go and talk to the big people in the province, they are the ones cutting trees, we don't know what to do.' This was a common response in Somthom commune when project team members started discussing the situation with locals.

This prompted the Seila/CARERE prpogramme to undertake a concerted effort to increase people's awareness and understanding of their rights under existing laws, with an emphasis on the fact that it was up to local communities to take actions to address these problems. Members of Somthom commune visited nearby Poey commune, where community forestry boundaries had been mapped to enable the community to prevent commercial logging in their ancestral forests. This practical demonstration showed Somthom community members that even powerful outsiders could be thwarted by community organization and initiative.

After seeing the experience of Poey, Somthom community members expressed a keen interest in working on resource management issues and in particular on the oil palm concession agreement. Villages identified their customary boundaries and the natural resources in them. Then they discussed their problems over these resources. The project team helped build upon the traditional experiences and management systems of the community by formulating management plans and participatory mapping processes. Sol Yuch from Somthom commented, 'As part of our plan we produced a map of our community. This map contains information on the location of fallow forests, spirit forests, agricultural land, streams, and lakes.' Also included on such maps were watershed forests (forest areas protected for drinking water supply), burial forests, village forests maintained as protection from strong winds and forests for non-timber forest product (NTFP) collection. Traditional elders, who are the custodians of the traditional knowledge and who counselled the community in all matters, played an important role in decisions about map features.

Computer-generated maps were produced using information gathered from community discussions and consultations with neighbouring communities. At the insistence of the provincial governor, a global positioning system (GPS) device was used to mark boundaries. Then, using their traditional resource management practices, the men and women in the communities formalized and shared rules to manage the forests and other resources, within identified customary boundaries. These rules included, for example, agreement that swidden plots are not allowed in the spirit forests and that growing more than 2 ha of cashew nuts per family would not be permitted.

All maps and regulations made by the community had to pass through the different levels of government officials. The community presented them first at the commune level, where the neighbouring communities had opportunity to comment, and any disagreements were resolved. They were then presented at the district level, and finally at the provincial level where different line departments and other stakeholders commented and agreed on the set of documents from the community. Finally the governor would sign the maps, rules and regulations endorsing these agreements.

When Somthom presented these documents at the provincial level the government requested the Provincial Conflict Resolution Committee to investigate the situation. The government observed that Somthom's situation involved clearly overlapping and contradictory tenure claims between the community and the concessionaire. Once the committee had verified the maps and traditional boundaries, the province called the two parties together to discuss the situation and come to an agreement. The land-use maps helped the community members explain that they needed the resources for their livelihoods, that they had longstanding customary claims and use patterns in the area, and also that most of the forested areas were rocky and infertile for oil palm cultivation. With the intervention of the provincial government, the community convinced the company that it was not worth pursuing their claim to the resources in Somthom except for the 200 ha they had cleared in 1996. The voluntary agreement of the concessionaire in this precedent-setting case was essential to a successful outcome. It could have been very difficult (and career-threatening) for government staff to force the concessionaire to give up this land.

The maps drawn up by the community were vital to building a convincing case. They showed outsiders and government authorities the boundaries, user areas, and resource management practices of the community. They also demonstrated to the communities that natural resources were not limitless (as in traditional worldviews). The process of publicly reviewing and discussing the maps, complemented by discussions on natural resource trends, built strong consensus within communities – including those community members who were identified as loggers – to protect increasingly scarce forest resources.

After producing maps and formulating the management plans, villagers began to implement them. If problems arose in managing their resources, they were encouraged to solve the problems themselves with minimal support from outside groups. This helped them think through their management strategies and build ownership of project activities. The communities carried out discussions and dialogues with neighbouring villagers and only when the situation was beyond the control of communities did the project staff step in.

To further strengthen community-based activities, communities formed natural resource management committees (NRMCs). These groups reported to the elected commune council and many of their members were also commune or village council members. The NRMCs provided assistance in mapping the community's customary use areas, formulating rules and regulations, and negotiating with neighbouring communities, provincial authorities and outsiders. The NRMCs were composed of elected community members and worked with the traditional elders who advised them. The NRMCs also assisted village authorities, established by the government, to make management plans for natural resources in their commune and ensure that NRM issues were included in their village and commune development plans.

Illiteracy in Khmer reduced the confidence of many indigenous communities. Through non-formal education (NFE) classes aimed at Khmer literacy, sponsored by the action research project, indigenous communities became more articulate. Study tours, drama, role-playing, exchange visits and NFE classes raised awareness and improved the skills needed for participatory planning. The project assisted villagers to travel to provincial or district government offices to engage in discussions with government staff. This allowed them to present their problems and argue their case themselves, and it built relationships so that officials also consulted villagers more frequently.

A continuing influx of people (immigrants and government staff) has exposed indigenous communities to new sociocultural influences. Cultural changes affect a community's social cohesiveness and its pride in its own cultural heritage, especially among the younger generation. By emphasizing the positive aspects of traditional approaches to NRM, the project helped to strengthen recognition and support for indigenous culture.

The community-based plans and agreements with the provincial government were not at first recognized at the national level because there were no legal procedures or instruments to support such activities. However, these planning instruments became quite effective at the local level. As well, other communities went through similar processes to stop outsiders from taking land and forests within their customary boundaries without first consulting community members. For example, in Tinchak commune government officials came and told the community members, 'Whether you accept money or not we will take the land, so it is better you take some money.' After a locally organized mapping process, when the same officials returned to take more land the community showed them the maps and the officials reconsidered their approach. The community had learned the power of using a formal tool (land-use plan and maps) to achieve its political objectives (more secure tenure).

While these agreements were being developed in the field, the national government began reformulating the land law. The CARERE team and NGOs in Ratanakiri realized that to legalize the rights of communities to use their natural resources they would have to lobby for indigenous concerns during the reformulation of this law. The Seila programme requested UNDP to hire a lawyer who would coordinate with the project at the provincial level and assist in drafting the new land law, focusing specifically on issues affecting indigenous people. The communities were involved in an iterative consensus-building process that allowed them to provide inputs to the formulation of the chapter on indigenous communities in the land law. In cooperation with NGOs and other international organizations, the project also ensured communities' participation in important workshops at the provincial and national level.

Similarly, meetings with key policy-makers, donors and community representatives were organized, creating a direct link and open discussion between policy-makers and villagers. Local leaders became increasingly articulate and confident in presenting their case, even to the extent of arranging a personal audience with King Sihanouk (Figure 3.3). A frank discussion between an indigenous villager and the king about sensitive policy issues was unprecedented. The project also hosted study tours for policy-makers during which communities could explain their situation on-site. For example, a second (or deputy) prime minister, Hun Sen, visited the scenic Yeak Loam lake in 1997, the commune where the earliest CBNRM activities had started. After presentations about the CBNRM's work, he promised that, as the most powerful politician in Cambodia, he would protect the lake and surrounding environment for ever (Reibe, 1999).

Figure 3.3 Indigenous representative meeting the king
Source: Yeak Loam Lake Management Committee, 2000.

Direct meetings of the indigenous people with policy-makers were found to be more effective than contacts mediated by NGO representatives or through other official channels. Policy-makers at all levels seemed to appreciate this, probably because it was clear that the indigenous people were speaking for themselves rather than telling the government what they had been primed to say by development organizations. These direct discussions also resulted in breaking down negative stereotypes about minority peoples that were widely held by national authorities.

As a result of the diverse efforts of this project, many other organizations and the indigenous peoples themselves, provisions for collective tenure and customary land use emerged in draft legislation. Later, the government began formulating other related legislation on forestry, community forestry and protected areas. The project used its field experience in Ratanakiri province to provide advocacy groups with evidence to lobby for indigenous considerations in these laws as well.

Building the capacity to decentralize

For negotiations between indigenous communities and government authorities to take place on more equal terms, awareness-raising and community empowerment had to be complemented by building the capacity of provincial institutions to decentralize resource management decision-making. The Seila local government reforms and decentralization processes provided an opportunity with enormous potential to influence the government's attitudes and their approach to working with indigenous people.

The province had to be first introduced to CBNRM as a practical approach. An opportunity arose when the province was looking for solutions for two practical issues. The first was the petition from Somthom commune (see above), which requested the Provincial Department of the Environment to help stop logging in their sacred forests. The second occurred in Ochum commune, where a floating weed was covering the hydropower reservoir, threatening the electrical supply to the provincial town. The CARERE team engaged with provincial agencies presented CBNRM as an option to try to tackle these problems. CBNRM activities were started as an experiment in three communes: Somthom, Ochum and Yeak Loam.¹

The Provincial Department of the Environment became the lead agency in implementing CBNRM activities, with a provincial core team formed by technical staff seconded from different line departments. This team was trained in skills to carry out participatory land use planning (PLUP) and participatory rural appraisal (PRA) with communities. To support the provincial core team in the field, a commune core team was established, consisting of members selected from local NRMCs. As well, the project set up a supporting geographic information system (GIS) unit to assist the province develop computerized maps. The provincial core team assisted the communities to develop maps, rules and regulations and then set up workshops and meetings at which NRMCs could present them along with their case. It was this provincial core team that helped Somthom commune map its traditional user areas and then present them to the province and other parties. The director of the Department of Environment initiated the discussions on Somthom at the provincial level and was present at the negotiations between the commune, the plantation concessionaire and the government. Pleased with the results in the case of Somthom, the provincial authorities decided to spread CBNRM activities to all the communes in Ratanakiri.

The CBNRM activities were supported by awareness-raising for staff from other line departments. Awareness-building at the provincial level focused on helping the government understand the complexity of indigenous management systems and the rights of indigenous people. Sharing research results from this project and from other researchers (such as from national universities) with provincial agencies helped foster the understanding and appreciation of traditional resource management systems and the agricultural practices of indigenous communities. Such findings were also presented to national government ministry staff. The information was initially received with scepticism by professional staff with deeply-held assumptions about indigenous practices (and a Khmer paddy rice-based cultural background), but similar evidence from multiple sources helped change perceptions. This shift in attitudes was reinforced by direct discussions or meetings with communities and the presentation of resource management maps in the field.

Provincial government officials from the different line departments were also given training on good governance and management through the Seila programme. This introduced new understandings of the relationship between government and civil society. The intention was to help public officials shift away from the viewpoint that laws were intended for government to control society, towards an understanding that laws are intended to help people live together in a mutually agreeable manner. As stated by Hor Hong, director of the Provincial Department of Environment, 'We tried to set up protected sites before, but since the initiative only came from our staff, we failed.' Hong now strongly supports CBNRM and the implementation of community land management and mapping in Ratanakiri. This has earned him national recognition of a gold medal for these efforts.

Provincial line-agency staff came to see their role as more facilitation than enforcement, which represents a radical transformation. Facilitators were encouraged to conduct activities in a participatory manner and were rewarded with increased responsibility. Trust and transparency were important to all parties. The government was kept informed of all activities. Such transparency led to a better understanding of the project's work and eventually smoothed the process of obtaining official approval of local resource management agreements. The Seila principles (dialogue, clarity, agreement and respect) were crucial to this process.

Study tours for provincial staff were not always successful because some participants, who had few opportunities for travel and recreation, tended to prioritize enjoyment over learning. But senior provincial officials and their staff were committed to these reforms. They were compelled to present, defend and explain the project many times during workshops in the province or Phnom Penh (the national capital), and to many visiting delegations. Their preparation for such presentations served to consolidate learning and policy rationales for the CBNRM innovations.

Provincial-level government agencies work under the Provincial Rural Development Committee (PRDC) as part of the decentralization experiment. This body, consisting of the heads of each provincial line department, oversees and coordinates all administrative matters in Ratanakiri. It also takes joint responsibility for any decisions made, which has helped to curb compartmentalized and sectoral thinking. The PRDC was strengthened as part of the government's decentralization efforts. One of the more important issues they dealt with was providing tenure security to indigenous communities. The PRDC also gained credibility and authority over the line departments after receiving external funding through the Seila system. Provincial line budgets were also reviewed to help departments plan their activities in accordance with PRDC priorities for Ratanakiri, rather than wait for instructions from their respective funding ministries in Phnom Penh.

The CARERE project worked with provincial line departments and with the PRDC to develop procedures and tools for implementing CBNRM. The process required a joint learning approach with communities so that they could map their traditional resource use areas and formulate rules and regulations for managing the resources. These procedures had to be accepted by the PRDC before they could be implemented. The procedures allowed all levels of government to comment on the rules and regulations, which were finally signed by the provincial governor. It was clear to all that the community had the right to accept or reject suggestions that were inappropriate or did not conform to their local practices. One study (Ironside and Nhem, 1998) points out that, although the groundwork for community participation had been laid, the work started in the middle of massive forest exploitation. Therefore, the political landscape was not conducive to rapid or definitive NRM reforms. Given the importance of natural resources in Ratanakiri and the vested interests around them, it took time to negotiate these changes.

In 1998, the Seila local planning process for decentralized rural development, which the PRDC followed, showed some serious deficiencies in Ratanakiri. Communities were not including NRM considerations while formulating their commune development plans. For example, in Somthom commune, while the forests were being logged and land taken by the company, the community's annual development planning and budgeting process addressed only schools and health centres. The CARERE project began to assist the PRDC to change the Seila planning process to include natural resource considerations as a priority in their planning efforts. As in many development projects, even under decentralized decision-making it is often easier to build physical infrastructure such as schools than to tackle issues that may imply changes in legislation or require complicated negotiations with the provincial government. The revised planning process allowed communities to raise natural resource issues as part of routine local planning, and required the provincial agencies to respond to such priorities through a government-sanctioned planning process. This allowed Somthom and other communes to include NRM activities in their commune plans in 1999, thus legitimizing resource management activities at the commune (local government) level.

The inclusion of local natural resource issues was a dramatic reform because it stepped into an area that was highly controversial. Up until that time there had been no legal recognition of the traditional rights of indigenous communities over land and forests. All land and forests belonged to the state, therefore, if the government so desired they had the right to give these resources to anyone and all Cambodian citizens had the right to procure land anywhere. Loss of traditional land or forests was not an issue. As part of the inclusion of NRM issues in the local planning process, communities began to focus on the loss of their traditional rights to forests and lands. Once the governor began to approve these local development plans, the government accepted the threat to these rights as an issue. And, once it was officially on the agenda, NGOs and departments could legally assist communities attempting to regain their traditional rights. This paved the way for mapping traditional user areas and developing management plans based on traditional management systems in any community that requested legitimization of their traditional rights. Once these maps and plans were endorsed by the province, they gave the community the right to deny outsiders access to their traditional resources.

The other area where the team helped the PRDC develop procedures was conflict resolution. It became clear early on that conflict resolution was an integral part of CBNRM, especially during boundary demarcation. Land grabbing and illegal or even legal encroachment were common and the resulting conflicts had to be addressed. An important example of this was Somthom, where the resolution of the conflict surrounding the concession paved the way for further community-based NRM activities. The team assisted the PRDC in setting up the Provincial Conflict Resolution Committee whose mandate was to investigate natural resource conflicts, including land grabbing by government officials. When one very senior provincial department director began to expand the boundary of his 50-ha plantation each year by 5–10 metres, complaints from the community led the committee to investigate the issue. The director ended up apologizing to the community, blaming his workers for this problem, and relocated the fence to its original boundary. The conflict resolution committee thus dealt with conflicts that traditional systems could not handle.

Through this action-learning cycle of observing, learning, planning and implementing, PRDC confidence in and support for CBNRM activities increased. As Phan Phirin, chief of the executive committee of the Ratanakiri PRDC, stated, 'Compared to the lowlands, Ratanakiri is still rich in natural resources. I think CBNRM can help protect these natural resources and prevent them from being destroyed further. It is especially important that community members are involved in the project. CBNRM is very important for Ratanakiri.' This new-found confidence allowed the provincial government to host workshops with NGOs at provincial and national levels where different ministries discussed and began to understand issues and clarified the interpretation of laws. This was a significant development at the time because new laws were being created such as the forest law, community forestry sub-decree and land law, which acknowledged indigenous rights and the rights of communities to manage their resources. However, the ministries each wanted to claim their share of resources, so there were frequent conflicts of interpretation between different laws.

It is important to have new laws and policies endorsing both indigenous peoples' and resources' rights. However, many ministries work in isolation and interpret the laws to suit their needs. This leads to considerable tension over how to actually implement new policies at the provincial level.

Thus, in one workshop a representative of the Forestry Administration said, 'According to the Forest Law, the Commune Council has no right to manage forests. This right can only be obtained through a Community Forestry Agreement.' The representative from the Ministry of Interior stood up and emphatically stated: 'I would like all of us to look at the newly formulated Commune Council Law which states: The Commune Council plays the main role to protect natural resources in the commune. They are the lowest government administrative unit, and therefore, all line departments must strengthen the commune councils to be able to do this.'

Both sides agreed to discuss this further with their respective department or ministry and then respond to provincial authorities. Sometimes the provincial government can do little until national agencies work out their differences. But the open discussion of issues and the creation of opportunities for CBNRM, both in policy and practice, would not have been possible at all just a few years earlier.

Networking

CBNRM is a holistic process requiring multisectoral and multilevel interaction. Therefore, the research team, together with local counterparts in the different line ministries and community groups, linked up with government officials, NGOs and international organizations working in different sectors and levels. Without such networking it would not have been possible to achieve positive results. These other organizations could raise sensitive issues which affect indigenous people's lives with different audiences from those that the researchers could approach. The CARERE team also realized that what had started as a single-action research cycle began to spread into different areas that initiated valuable research cycles in other communities.

These different approaches enabled the government to help deal with the problems it encountered in decentralized NRMs. For example, the national government granted a logging concession known as the Hero Forest Concession, which inadvertently included an important sacred forest area of one community. Together with a number of NGOs, the Seila project organized a provincial workshop where NGOs raised the issue of logging in the sacred forests of indigenous people. This led to a provincial study to identify and demarcate the sacred forests in the concession area and a prohibition of logging in such forests.

This networking required the research team to maintain good relations with both government and NGOs. But trying to balance between the divergent expectations of NGOs and the government was often very difficult. Our group sometimes felt like meat on a chopping block – but with each success, our confidence in the work grew.

The work of NGOs in empowering communities is often more effective because they have highly motivated staff who worked closely with a small number of the communities. NGOs also have the choice to select staff in accordance with their mandate and ability. Our job was to help the government work with a large number of communities testing CBNRM methods in collaboration with line agency staff. Government staff tend to mechanically apply processes and tools through existing administrative structures. In such a project context, project leaders are often unable to select the participating government staff. However, in the long run, because the processes and tools developed by CARERE for implementing CBNRM were matched to the conditions and problems of the provincial agencies involved, they were easier to replicate within the government system. That this has worked is borne out by the fact that lessons and approaches learned in the Ratanakiri CBNRM project are now being scaled up in other provinces under a Seila NRM mainstreaming project.

Figure 3.4 CBNRM action research in Ratanakiri (shows action research is not linear but keeps on spreading).
Source: Adapted from Kolb, 1984.

Role of the research project in a changing institutional landscape

While there was a broad engagement of government and NGOs regarding indigenous rights in Ratanakiri, there was a marked difference in the experience of local planning and negotiations supported by NGOs and those supported by the Seila project team. Communities supported by NGOs were found to be more confrontational in their dealings with the provincial government and less willing to come to terms with it. The government was more willing to deal with communities assisted by Seila, because the negotiations were conducted in accordance with the Seila principles by both sides, and because government staff were themselves involved in project training and implementation.

The merging of the UNDP service delivery governance reform project (Seila) with an action-research project (the IDRC-supported research) brought about an unusual blend of approaches. The Ratanakiri project became a research project to develop innovative procedures to strengthen governance for indigenous people. The processes were designed to suit local needs, and to deal with NRM in a participatory manner. Many other donor activities supported this effort, but the research project played a leading role in several key elements:

• identifying indigenous resource management practices and tenure arrangements to be included in draft legislation dealing with resource tenure, and ensuring these issues were kept on the agenda of policy-makers;
  
  
• developing procedures to delineate resource tenure (e.g. the PLUP process for indigenous people), which respected customary rights; and
  
  
• delivering evidence and training for government officials to build recognition and respect for the traditional rights of indigenous communities;

The provincial government also actively supported indigenous civil organizations such as the Yeak Loam Lake Management Committee, the Natural Resource Management Network and the Highlanders' Association in Ratanakiri, which all worked to improve the conditions of indigenous people. On some occasions, the provincial government went so far as to provide financial support to these bodies for specific activities. The relationship was ruffled many times by disputes, but these situations helped build respect (e.g. the politically embarrassing issue of the governor's expanding fenceline, above). Overall, the provincial government became more responsive, open and accountable to indigenous communities in the province.

At the local level, communities now had legally recognized maps, rules and regulations that they could use to prevent land sale or the extraction of forest resources. The understanding of resource rights became so widespread that even some communities without CBNRM project activities intervened to prevent outsiders from using their forests. For example, in Chaung commune, local people confiscated chain saws from the military, returning them only after negotiating an agreement that the military would no longer enter their forest lands, even though they lacked the legal force of a recognized local land-use plan.

Challenges

The success of Somthom commune in gaining recognition of traditional resource use and management rights from provincial authorities was a historic moment for Ratanakiri. The provincial government has now replicated CBNRM processes in 20 other communes and is planning to apply them to the whole province. However, with this experience, further challenges have emerged. Simply granting the right to a community to manage its resources does not guarantee that traditional management systems will work in an environment experiencing enormous pressures. Not all communities and individuals can sustain an interest in traditional practices, especially in the face of a changing landscape with multiple and contested interests. For example, in recent years cashews have become a golden crop in Ratanakiri and many indigenous farmers are planting their shifting cultivation forest lands to cashew trees for the higher income these provide. This rapid conversion from shifting cultivation to cashew plantations leads to complicated tenure changes. Whereas shifting cultivation forests were once recognized as community property that could not be alienated, recent trends indicate that this may not be true in the case of cashew plantations. Some individual swidden plots are taking on more of the character of a private property and are sold to outsiders. There are concerns and conflicts within communities about such complicated issues, which pit the rights of individuals to claim private ownership against the rights of the community to protect forest-based livelihoods. Table 3.1 summarizes some of the challenges in implementing CBNRM more broadly in a larger number of communes.

Furthermore, even in communes where CBNRM processes were strong, there are continuing conflicts over the enforcement of local management rules and boundaries. More robust procedures and adaptation are needed to deal with diverging local interests. To assist communities in dealing with these problems internally, the project is working with NGOs and international organizations to establish a provincial Natural Resource Management Network consisting of different commune NRMCs. This network should bring greater mutual support and coordination of resource management activities while providing background support, such as communication materials in local dialects and legal extension information about rights and regulatory reforms A bigger challenge, however, is that some national agencies now question the validity of the provincially negotiated resource-management agreements. Recent regulatory changes put the responsibility for community forest planning, for example, within the Ministry for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. But in Ratanakiri, it has been the Department of the Environment which has led the integrated PLUP and CBNRM activities, and facilitated approval of local resource management plans. Inter-agency disputes at the national level now require additional political effort to resolve.

The Ratanakiri project team, still engaged with local governance reforms and CBNRM research, has also had to reassess emerging policies and leadership at the national level in order to collaborate with agencies that are most likely to be able to implement the innovations arising from the research work (e.g. PLUP for indigenous peoples, developed in 2004 for implementation by the Ministry of Land Management, Planning and Construction).

Table 3.1 Challenging situations in various communes

After decades of displacement and conflict, and with the widespread reform of all the mechanisms of governance and public administration, the national government is now attempting to classify and formalize public and private tenure for all land resources. To do this, they will use the PLUP process. But there are concerns that the identification of land-use categories locally will also identify the jurisdiction of line departments with respect to different land-based resources. The division of resource jurisdiction could have severe implications for implementing local land-use plans, which have already been approved in Ratanakiri and other provinces for lands that are managed locally as common property based on customary arrangements. Separate line agency jurisdiction over different resources (forests, water, fisheries, agriculture, etc.) inevitably overlaps in the decision-making of users on the ground, making planning and management interventions very difficult to coordinate.

One option is to secure communal (collective) title for land resources. According to Article 25 of the land law, 'indigenous communities can own land communally under a communal land title', but there is little guidance for how communal titling should work in practice, and what procedures should be used for the registration and enforcement of communal land rights. Seila staff are using the research team's CBNRM experiences to guide research, analysis and feedback to the formulation of the national regulations on communal land titling. This will require addressing many legal ambiguities in the current legislation.

With this in mind, the national level government requested the Seila programme in Ratanakiri to assist in working with indigenous people on piloting the communal land titling processes. Seila staff are using the research team's CBNRM experiences to guide activities which will provide analysis and feedback on the formulation of the national regulations' sub-decree on communal land titling.

The main problem for piloting remains precisely how to interpret the laws at the local and community level. For instance, the Forest Administration interprets the legislation to mean they have exclusive jurisdiction of all forest lands, whether they have trees on them or not (i.e. including fallow forest), while others disagree.

Gains

Although this chapter has pointed out some of the challenges in working on CBNRM, significant gains have also been made beyond Somthom.

At the grassroots level, communities were able to reduce land grabbing and illegal resource exploitation, such as logging, unmanaged collection of NTFP (fruits, medicinal plants, building materials and wildlife) and illegal fishing methods such as using explosives to catch fish in streams. Communities also include natural resource issues in the commune development plans, to which government departments are required to respond and which also provide a good starting point for support by NGOs. Because the government demonstrated it could play a constructive role in helping solve some of the communities' problems, the communities in turn began to put more trust in the government. At the same time, because communities have a better understanding of their rights, they question or complain to higher authorities when laws are broken or proper procedures are not followed.

At the provincial level, the government is more willing to tackle issues faced by indigenous communities, even when this involves politically sensitive issues such as limiting forest concessions. Provincial technical and line department staff have begun to appreciate the resource management systems of indigenous communities. They have the confidence to recognize and hand over management rights to communities, as demonstrated by the fact that to date the PRDC and provincial governor have officially recognized the land-use and management plans of 15 communes.

Provincial officials now listen with more respect to indigenous people when they raise issues. This is a huge shift from the experiences of just a few years ago, when indigenous spokespersons would be humiliated when they spoke publicly because of their limited command of the Khmer language. The provincial government is now more open to discussing laws and legal instruments and even invites the officials at the national level to clarify contradictions, rather than waiting for a national initiative. In addition, it has been active in promoting a uniform interpretation of legal reforms and supporting legal extension services to help indigenous communities know what their rights are. In several cases, the provincial conflict resolution committee has investigated land grabbing by high-level provincial officials and helped both sides come up with a negotiated agreement. Land grabbing and extortion continues in Ratanakiri, but the innovations piloted through action research and adopted by the provincial government have greatly reduced the number of such experiences.

Officials from other provinces who have visited Ratanakiri have appreciated the provincial government's achievements. In one example, after a visit to Ratanakiri, the provincial governor of the neighbouring province of Mondolkiri sided with an indigenous community in his own province when it complained that a community member had sold communal land to outsiders. The sale was ruled illegal, based on the precedent of indigenous collective tenures in Ratanakiri, and the land was returned to the community.

Another outcome of the work has been that provincial authorities are now more tolerant of NGOs and international organizations. Having seen in practice that their support is sometimes valuable, government officials have become more responsive to issues raised by such groups.

At the national level, the research team in Ratanakiri has established strong links to many agencies involved in local government, resource legislation and tenure reforms. The experiences of participatory land-use planning in Ratanakiri have become widely known in the country, and are serving as models for both the Ministry of Land Management and Urban Planning, as well as the national Seila programme. The issue of communal resource tenure and management remains controversial. Future developments will depend to some extent on the resolution of contradictory interpretations of recent legislation. Finally, the policy for indigenous people has been drafted and is being negotiated by different line ministries and departments.

Conclusions and lessons learned

The confidence to make decisions based on good evidence, without consulting national superiors, enabled the provincial government to challenge the concessionaire and support land and forest rights in Somthom commune. In 2000, the provincial governor endorsed the community maps and NRM plans for this commune. Since then, the villagers have used these plans to help them solve other conflicts, including preventing the military from entering their forests. The success of Somthom has been replicated in many other communes in Ratanakiri, and has led to a dramatic change in attitudes, procedures, roles, and policies for the provincial government in NRM.

The crucial foundation of this success has been the action research work undertaken by the project team at the grassroots level. Testing innovations on the ground is essential to understanding complex and dynamic local situations, and to providing credible evidence to policy makers. Learning from innovative local practice is crucial to building the commitment of local, provincial and national governments and the capacity and confidence of communities themselves. With greater understanding and confidence, indigenous communities can explain their own situation to government policy-makers directly. The experience of direct dialogue was very influential in shifting attitudes and assumptions of senior government officials and politicians.

The project devoted substantial effort to networking with government and nongovernmental organizations, international groups and development donors. In an environment of rapid change in policy and governance contexts, the lessons from PAR in Ratanakiri provided timely and relevant evidence for advocacy. In some situations, the project members found that large international donors were supportive in raising issues and pushing agendas which the project or government staff could not. This greatly helped to ensure that national agencies could not skirt awkward issues.

The project was proactive in its approach. The evidence from the field showed the need for changes in local governance. But instead of waiting for national legal authority and regulatory frameworks to be designed, the project used its on-the-ground experience with innovative practices that influenced the design of the emerging legislation.

But this is a challenging working environment. Legal systems are in a state of flux and powerful government agencies are in conflict. Therefore, effective intervention requires a sophisticated and astute understanding of the local culture and political relationships, and of how to navigate in such murky waters. In these circumstances, flexibility to adapt and take advantage of emerging opportunities is important.

Over the life of the research project, there has been a dramatic change in expectations of the role of public services in Cambodia. Widespread governance reforms and the introduction of new democratic institutions, combined with accessible training programmes, have greatly altered the way in which public officials and citizens view the nature of government. The project staff were able to take advantage of these broader trends by providing Ratanakiri provincial officials with new models of professional behaviour based on consultation, public participation and official facilitation. They were able to instil a sense of responsibility towards improved NRM and the issues faced by indigenous communities. This resulted in communities being better able to control exploitation of the resources they traditionally used.

Reforms in Cambodia to make local government more representative, transparent and accountable are mutually supportive of CBNRM activities. Participatory resource planning and management at the local level needs to include not only rights, but also responsibilities and accountability from the community and provincial authorities. Proper sanctions should be in place to ensure that agreements are enforced and procedures followed by community members as well as public authorities at different levels. Public accountability and coordination were greatly facilitated in the Ratanakiri case by the engagement and support of the PRDC, which coordinated implementation by the line agencies.

Our experiences show that CBNRM is not easy and that it takes time and resources. Community empowerment is crucial to successful CBNRM, but at the same time, building the capacity of the government to decentralize and adopt new roles is also very important. CBNRM needs a coordinated multisectoral approach with networking and negotiation at different levels of government. NGOs and international organizations, as part of civil society, are important to counterbalance the power exerted by the government and to provide independent criticism if legal procedures are not followed.

The success of Ratanakiri in influencing national policy and spreading innovations widely in the province has depended on a harmonized approach that carefully balances the many different aspects of the work.

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the contributions of other team members over the project's lifetime: Kim Srey, Kong Shronnoh, Hou Serey Vathana, Touch Tonet and Lun Kimhy. Others who played critical roles in this initiative but have left the project include Tonie Nooyens, Min Muny, Sang Polrith, Nhem Sovanna, Jeremy Ironside, Graeme Brown, Ken Reibe and Andrew McNaughton.

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