Forty-six-year-old Nhop Ny has owned property in the village of Klaing in Battambang for the past eight years.  He had been farming just 15 percent of the land, however, because it was so heavily contaminated with landmines.  He was barely getting by and supporting his wife and three children on a government supplement he receives for an old military injury. Nhop Ny's story is unfortunately a familiar one in Cambodia, which remains one of three countries most affected by landmines and unexploded ordinance (UXO).  Despite a drop in casualties in 2006 compared with the previous five years, landmines and UXO continue to affect countless communities throughout Cambodia by reducing access to land for agriculture and resettlement.

For more than ten years, Meas Pov has served as a Commune Councilor in Tang Kcha village in the province of Kampong Speu. She is in charge of children and women's issues, domestic violence and land conflicts. One thing that she never forgot to do whenever she handled a case was to advise villagers to end their disputes through conciliations and not bring them up to the provincial court. Her only concern was that villagers would end up spending a lot of money to travel on a bumpy 40-kilometer road to the court, which is the only court in town, to seek solutions, whereas their problems could be solved at the commune level. Pov's advice was not very effective in convincing the villagers because she had no authority to pass judgment on any case. But they actually asked her where they should go if the provincial court was not the option. Pov never had a clear answer.

Klev Ngoch walked four kilometres and spent at least two hours every day waiting to collect water for his family's daily consumption. He and his fellow villagers would flock to a small spring-fed pool -- the only source of water in the community -- just for a 30-litre bucket of water. The spring-fed pool, which was one square meter in diameter and a half meter in depth with a capacity of 200 litres, would run out of water when several people came at the same time, and some people needed to wait until the pool refilled. This practice had become a routine for decades for Klev Ngoch and people in the eastern province of Mondulkiri's Andong Kraloeng village, located some 300 kilometres from the capital, Phnom Penh.

They call her Avytouch on the street. She's 18, but looks 14, and she has been in Phnom Penh since she ran away from her village two years ago. She left for two reasons: she had to get away from the neighbour who had raped her, and she had to support her family.   When her father died, he left behind Avy and her six siblings. Her mother now makes a small amount of money collecting cans. On a good night for Avy, she can make more than US$20. On some nights she makes nothing.

The villagers go out on foot and on bikes, patrolling the area around their community. They are the eyes and the ears of the forest: they look for smoke, indications of poacher's fires, or listen for the sound of the illegal loggers' chainsaws. They are protecting their land so that future generations of Cambodians can live on it, make good use of it, and enjoy the splendour of one of the greatest natural resources in Asia.