Tuesday, 05 June 2012
By Emmeline Johansen
Phnom Penh Post
Conservation International has focused more than 10 years of our work in the Cardamom Mountains.
In
2002, we were extremely pleased that the government set aside 402,000
hectares for the Central Cardamoms Protected Forest (CCPF).
The
CCPF has extremely high biodiversity and watershed value. It is home to
about one-third of all endangered and rare species in the country’s
Forestry Law and almost 50 species listed by the International Union for
Conservation of Nature as threatened. It is also the source of some of
the country’s largest rivers and safeguards a vital watershed.
Protection
of CCPF is particularly exemplary given the larger in-country context
of intense economic land concessions and other pressures impacting on
forests. CI played a critical role in protecting the CCPF, helping to
declare it as a protected forest, conducting research, and generating
information about the natural bounty and importance of the CCPF and it
resources.
We also developed conservation agreements with
communities living in and around the CCPF to help communities protect
natural resources and explore alternative livelihoods. And we
sub-granted funds to the Forestry Administration to bolster their
patrolling and other enforcement efforts.
Through protection of
the CCPF, a wealth of ecosystem services are provided to the 2,000
people living inside its borders and the thousands more living around
it.
These include forest for sediment control and water-flow
regulation; water for fisheries in the Tonle Sap via the Pursat River;
and water for hydro-power production south of the CCPF. The potential
for forest carbon investments is also being explored, given the
Cambodian government’s interest in these projects as part of its
national green growth strategy.
Ultimately, CI aims to build
national capacity to protect forested ecosystems, develop a trust fund
for CCPF, and align partners to protect the zone buffering the CCPF. We
aim for a future where forests, watershed and other resources are
protected so that biodiversity and the Cambodian people benefit, both
now and in the future.
Emmeline Johansen is the regional communications manager, Asia Pacific Field Division, for Conservation International
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