Sustainable Forest Management

Purpose of Project

The project aims to strengthen sustainable forest management (SFM) through decentralized forest management integrating SFM in Community Forestry (CFs) and Community Protected Areas (CPA) and promoting a landscape-based approach. The results of decentralized forest management will help increase income of local communities, feed into policy, planning, on-going implementation and investment frameworks, and also create the basis for sustainable wood-energy efficiency technologies to reduce CO2 emissions.

The project is executed by the Forestry Administration (FA) which is the Implementing Partner of UNDP/GEF. It is aligned to the National Forestry Programme 2010-29 (NFP) with the aim to cover 2 million hectares of forest area by the end of programme in 2029.  Field implementation takes place in Battambang, Pursat, Kampong Chhnang and Kampong Speu provinces.

Main Activities

The project will undertake the following key activities:

• Building individual and institutional capacity and creating enabling environment through consolidated guidelines and models for decentralized forest and protected area management.
• Development of business plans as part of management plans for 30 community forestry sites (CF) and 10 community protected areas (CPA) to generate income based on sustainable management of forest resources.
• Piloting the development of alternative CF modalities (Partnership Forestry, Production-based Community Forestry and Community-based Conservation Forestry) described in the National Forestry Program in 6 communities.
• Development of 5 community forestry sites for woodlot management plans.
• Enhancing national capacity and political will to coordinate and integrate CF & CPA development in a decentralized landscape-based approach through development of 4 commune land use planning (CLUP).
• Development and increasing production and marketing of improved cook stoves and the use of energy efficient charcoal kilns to reduce CO2 emissions.
• Mainstreaming gender issues to improve the status of women at various stages and activities during project implementation

Key Results

The project expects to produce the following outcomes:

• Improvement of existing national capacities, policies and regulations which facilitate the widespread implementation of sustainable community-based forest management and technologies that reduce demand for fuel wood.
• Effective implementation of community-based sustainable forest management planning at the provincial, district and commune levels and delivering concrete benefits to local communities.
• Improvement of community income from 30 CF and 10 CPA documented for enterprise development.
• Small and medium enterprises ensure long term increases in adoption of efficient technologies that reduce fuel wood demand.
• Reduction in C02 emissions through wood energy efficient technologies for cooking (efficient cook stoves and charcoal kilns) and the establishment of wood fuel plantations as community forests to protect natural forest against over-exploitation.
• Strengthened demand and supply chain for energy efficient cook stoves.
• Enhanced improvements in the conservation status of globally important biodiversity areas in the Cardamom Mountains.
• Improvement in biological and productive functioning of forests in the provinces where the project will work directly on the ground.

Background

Compared with its neighbouring countries, Cambodia still has a low population density and relatively large intact natural areas. The total area of forest in Cambodia is estimated at 10,864,186 hectares, equivalent to approximately 60% of total land area. However, the country’s forests have suffered from both deforestation and degradation. Around 2.1 million hectares of forestlands were converted to agriculture and other uses between 1960 and 1992-93.

Around 85% of Cambodians depend on agricultural and forest production for their primary livelihood, and forest resources contribute from 30% to 42% of the total household incomes of rural people. Over 84% of households in Cambodia meet their energy needs through fuel wood, which supplies approximately 70% of the total national energy demand.

Local people depend on the forest for timber for home construction, making agricultural equipment and cash income. Communities living near forests obtain non-timber forest products for subsistence use and sale. As a result, a large proportion of the existing forest estate is degraded: it is estimated that there are around 2,600,000 hectares of degraded forest land that require restoration.