Posted on July, 26 2007

The WWF Cambodia Country Programme’s Community Natural Resource Management (CNRM) team, with financial support from the US based, October Hill Foundation, is working with government authorities to  assist local communities to establish and sustainably manage Community Protected Areas (CPAs).
 
Almost all rural Cambodians use forest resources for construction materials, cooking fuels, and food- stuffs. For the poorest members of the rural community the forest acts as a socio-economic safety net, providing a range of products they could not otherwise afford.
 
The danger with indiscriminate use of the forest is that natural resources can quickly be destroyed by the very people who most depend on them for their long-term survival.
 
In order to combat this problem, the concept of CPAs was established to give communities a say in how they manage the forest within the overall confines of established and sustainable management practices.   
 
A CPA is an area of land within, or around a conservation area, which has been set aside for a local community to manage sustainably.  
 
WWF Cambodia’s CNRM team is working with two local communities to establish CPAs within Phnom Prich Wildlife Sanctuary (PPWS) - one of WWF’s major conservation sites in Cambodia. After much consultation with each community and government at both commune and district levels, the boundaries have been marked and regulations and  agreements drafted - a 3,000 hectare CPA for  the Sre Thom village and a 1,700 hectare site for the Khnheng village.
 
Building capacity within the communities to manage these CPA sites in an  appropriate manner is critical to the on-going success of WWF projects at PPWS. There are around 230 families who have registered to become CPA members, which in Khnheng village accounts for all families in the village. These families will be involved in forming the five-year management plan for their respective area and will be responsible for its long-term sustainable management.  
 
According to Sok Sarin, Chief of the CPA Committee in Sre Thom village, the establishment of a CPA will mean her children will be able to support their livelihoods by harvesting forest  resources long into the future.
 
The project, which will be completed by 2008, will assist local communities to utilize the resources within the CPA, while at the same time reducing the pressure on the core conservation area of PPWS.

For more information please contact:
Son Bora, CNRM Technical Staff
bora.son@wwfgreatermekong.org