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Government of Cambodia in developing the legal framework neces-
sary for community forestry.
The categorical failure of the concession system and the power-
ful alliance between international agencies and local civil society
led to the passage of the Forestry Law in 2002: ‘The Minister of
Agriculture Forests and Fisheries has the authority to allocate an area
of Permanent Forest Reserve to a community or group of people living
inside or near a forest area in the form of a community forest.’
5
Together with its partners, RECOFTC set about implement-
ing the Capacity-building for Sustainable Forest and Land
Management Project in 2006. First, a programme was designed
for each target cantonment through a 63-day Training of Trainers
course. These trainers then ran a series of courses in their canton-
ments for community forestry development facilitators so each
knew the next steps in the formalization process. Of particular
importance was the training of local forest administration staff
alongside NGO staff so that, through training together, they had
a similar understanding of development needs, built relationships
and were able to plan a coordinated course of action together.
The lack of understanding about community forestry among
government officials and their crucial role in endorsing docu-
ments without which community forests could not be formalized,
required a particular focus on training local government. Equally
critical was the training of forest community leaders, through
elected management committees.
The second component of the strategy was the development of
‘Cantonment Community Forest Development Plans’. These were
facilitated by the projects’ Partnership Coordinators through an
assessment of the requirements to complete the formalization
process, including funding needs as well as an analysis of what
each development partner had planned. The third component
targeted coordination at the national level among development
partners (both donors and international NGOs) and the Forestry
Administration. A National Community Forestry
Program Coordination Committee was established in
2007 in response to the need to chart the direction for
the Program, which required a clear understanding
of the current situation on the ground, the strengths
and weaknesses of current systems, and the oppor-
tunities that exist to further community forestry in
Cambodia.
Legal recognition for community forests
With the main building blocks in place, the partners
turned their attention to identifying potential commu-
nity forest sites and the work of building capacity for
legal recognition of these sites through six stages of
local, provincial and national requirements. In Kbal
O KraNhak, for instance, RECOFTC’s work began in
2008. Working closely with the local community and
the Forestry Administration through all the steps of
the process, it helped the community gain an official
community forest agreement on 11 November 2009 – a
day the villagers will never forget.
“RECOFTC had prepared a detailed plan for each
step of the legalization process,” recalls Phok Chantra,
the local Forestry Administration official. “Each step
had specific activities. I explained the process to the
community. We followed this plan through the whole
process. After the agreement was reached, I felt proud
because I had helped the community. It’s proof I didn’t
lie to them!” Chantra subsequently took three more
RECOFTC training courses “and then I delivered those
courses to the community: record keeping and finan-
cial management, resource assessment for Community
Forest Management Plans, and a forest inventory. Now,
Phok Chantra, a Forestry administration official, trained with RECOFTC so the
community could learn how to record and manage forest resources
Image: Alison Rohrs, RECOFTC
Chea Tun, mother of seven, no longer worries about feeding her
family and is active in patrolling the forest to report illegal logging
Image: Alison Rohrs, RECOFTC