In Preah Vihear province, villagers celebrate the return of a community lake

Luck wasn’t on her side as Chan Thi, a villager, laboriously navigated her fishing basket in the water trying to catch fish in Choam Prei lake. She moved from spot to spot, making her bet by scooping the basket in the water. But each time she lifted it, mud was all she caught.

“Disappointing,” moaned the 55-year-old, a resident of Romchek village, Romney commune, Preah Vihear province in northern Cambodia.

But after a pause she said she was happy too – happy that her community of mostly Kuoy indigenous people has won a battle to reclaim the lake from a better-off local farmer. The lake is now a community asset on which the villagers can pin hope for livelihood in the future.

It took them more than two years to win. Their victory was an isolated case, yet it signified a success story of Provincial Association of Commune/Sangkat, a network of governing bodies at sub-national level, in acting as a springboard to address local concerns.

Seng Chheang, 59 and the chief of Romney commune where the lake is located, was at the forefront of this battle.

“We have a duty to address the local issues as the people have entrusted us with their votes. We have to do our utmost to help to build our communities; we cannot just hang around until our term expires,” he said.

The contention over the lake started as long ago as 1998. Back then a village chief signed off the 30-ha lake to a local farmer named Bin Nhep, 61, to grow lotus.

Over the years, he added a fish farm. Two dykes were built to divide the lake into three parts to make fish ponds. He built a large wooden house on the lake to guard against trespassers. He said that by investing his own resources in the lake projects he had also contributed to protecting the surrounding forest from being logged.

The lake was off-limits not only to the villagers who used to depend on it for fish, but also to their cattle, which used to graze nearby and drink water from it. As such, villagers were denied a key source of livelihoods. Together, they collected thumbprints and filed a complaint with Romney commune office, about 225 km from Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital.

The commune chief, Seng Chheang, admitted that he first felt powerless to act. But after taking part in various meetings for members of Provincial Association of Commune/Sangkat, he found the strength to advocate for his community’s cause.

Those meetings were part of the forums of municipal and district authorities under the project Strengthening Democratic and Decentralized Local Governance in Cambodia (DDLG), which is jointly supported by the European Commission and UNDP. It aims to provide a mechanism for commune councils to exchange their experiences, to build network, to identify challenges and find solutions for protecting the community interests, concerns and needs.

At a forum held in Preah Vihear provincial town in 2009, Seng Chheang said the issue of Choam Prei lake was not on the agenda but he decided to break the protocol to voice it. To his surprise, he got the attention of other participants – and their support too.

“Without the forum, I would not have dared to fight that hard. I would have felt cold because I did not have enough support. It has given me confidence. It is a place I can go to for help when I have a problem,” he said.

“This lake could have become unrecognizable if we did not act on time and if we did not have the National League of Commune/Sangkat to raise the issue,” he added.

Beyond serving as a platform for commune/sangkat networking, the forum and the national league itself also provide venues for local issues to be more “widely heard” by channeling them to officials at the national level, said Young Huot, the president of Preah Vihear’s Provincial Association of Commune/Sangkat, who assisted Seng Chheang in his case.

The saga of Choam Prei lake got the attention of the Ministry of Environment. In January this year, H.E. Mok Mareth, Minister of Environment, declared the lake the property of the local community.

The villagers, overjoyed, are committed to preserving their shared natural asset. They talk about plans to stop leakage of water from the lake so that there is enough water for fish to spawn. Men in the village now also take turns patrolling the surrounding forest to ward against loggers and hunters. All of this is part of a greater dream they are cherishing – for the lake and its surrounding nature to become an eco-tourist site one day.

“That is our hope,” Som Doeun, 39, another villager, said as he wrestled a cat fish from a left-over net. “I’ve got a fish,” he exclaimed, trying to impress other villagers.

Chan Thi didn’t mind not having the same luck like her neighbour because, she said, as long as the lake now belongs to her community, there will be fish for her to catch next time.