Community Forestry Partnership Program

Overview

Pact’s Community Forestry Partnership (CFP) Program  is comprised of three projects that apply the organization’s abilities in the area of capacity building to help rural Cambodian communities protect their forest resources.

The CFP Program, which was absorbed into Pact Cambodia’s operation in early 2009, has been active in the country since its 2003 founding. It aims to protect Cambodia’s threatened forests and watersheds by helping the communities living near them to generate sustainable livelihoods from forest resources, and to enact effective methods of safeguarding their forestland from encroachment.

In concert with the Government of Cambodia and like-minded NGOs, Pact is working to achieve these goals through the following key strategies:

• Promoting and fostering effective partnerships between the community, local authorities and civil society organizations for improved natural resources management;

• Facilitating the legalization and tenure security of community forests and community protected areas;

• Supporting community-based non-timber forest product enterprises to create meaningful grass-roots incentives for conservation; and

• Securing financing for community forest protection and sustainable income-generation activities through the sale of carbon credits on the global market.

Program Activities

Pact Cambodia’s Community Forestry Partnership Program (CFP) consists of three core projects:

1. Community Forestry Establishment and Legal Tenure. CFP has assisted more than 150 communities to submit their claim for stewardship of the forests near their villages. More than 150 sites have thus far received pre-approval and a growing number of these sites have received 15-year legal tenure. The program
also supports mapping initiatives that delineate the area of community control, enabling more effective forest protection and reducing contentious encounters with competing interests.

2. Forest Livelihoods Program. CFP is providing a range of services to aid in non-timber forest product (NTFP) enterprise development to more than 20 communities across four regions. These services include assistance in the formation of cooperatives, through which communities are able to better manage and benefit from resources such as honey, rattan and resin. The program also includes a training component in which Pact staff help community participants to understand and utilize such techniques as resource assessment and inventory, community organizing and the use of sustainable techniques for harvesting, processing and marketing NTFPs. By increasing alternative income from the forest’s renewable resources, these programs help to decrease the pressure on timber resources, directly contributing to conservation.

 3. Sustainable Financing through REDD Forest Carbon. In coordination with the Cambodian Forestry Administration and several NGO and donor partners, CFP has initiated Cambodia’s first Reducing Emissions from Degradation and Deforestation (REDD) project. The Community Forestry/REDD project facilitates the marketing of the carbon credits generated by safeguarding 13 community forests in Oddar Meanchey province, covering more than 67,000 hectares of forestland. The credits will be sold on the global market, with the majority of the net income returning to the participating communities to support the continued development of sustainable livelihoods. To learn more about the Community Forestry/REDD project, please visit our video, which can be viewed in English or Khmer, or download our case study report, Communities and Carbon.

Community Forestry REDD in English Language Version