Understanding the Causes and Impacts of Climate Change in Cambodia

While only a small percentage of Cambodians spontaneously mention human activities as a cause of changing weather patterns, when asked directly, a third agree that their personal activities contribute. The majority of respondents blame deforestation for changes in the weather. A significant but much lower percentage blame pollution from industry, cars and fossil fuels generally.

Causes of Climate Change

When asked unprompted what they think has caused the weather patterns to change in Cambodia, two thirds (67%) of respondents think that deforestation in Cambodia causes the weather patterns to change, while just 3% mention deforestation outside the country’s borders. Just 18% of respondents mention industrial pollution as a cause.

29% say that they don’t know what causes the changing weather patterns, while just 11% mention driving cars and motor vehicles.

Impacts of Climate Change

Almost all of those respondents who have heard of the term ‘climate change’ (98%) also say that they think Cambodia is currently affected by climate change. Human health and agriculture are perceived to be worst affected. A substantial number of Cambodians (22%) say that they do not know whether Cambodia will feel the impacts of climate change in the future, suggesting that people are uncertain whether the changes they have experienced in their everyday lives will affect them in the long term.

Human health and agriculture are understood to receive the worst impacts of the changing weather. Most people (59%) mention the impact of climate change on health, with substantial numbers saying farming is more difficult (47%) and others mentioning drought (36%) and increasing temperatures (35%). Around a quarter (28%) mention decreases in agricultural yields and water shortages (24%).

Reference

BBC World Service Trust and the Ministry of Environment, (2011), Understanding Public Perceptions of Climate Change in Cambodia

Cambodian Youths State Issues

One study conducted by the BBC World Service Trust with support from UNDP in 2010 informs that Cambodian young people (aged from 15-24) have seen some main issues happening in their community, commune, and country as a whole.

A Cambodian university student

Village
-Gang 35%
-Crime 29%
-Poverty 17%
-Robbery 14%
-Water scarcity 10%

Commune
-Gang 23%
-Crime 11%
-Robbery 9%
-Don't know 47%

Nation
-Border conflict 28%
-Traffic 23%
-Drug abuse 14%
-Robbery 14%
-Natural disaster 11%
-Don't know 17%

Reference

BBC World Service Trust and UNDP, (2019), Youth Civic Participation  in Cambodia: Knowledge, Attitude, Practises and in Cambodia: Knowledge, Attitudes,  Practices, and Meidea.

Unclear Awareness of the Term Climate Change in Khmer

The terms ‘climate’ and ‘weather’, ‘akas theat’ and ‘theat akas’  in Khmer are very similar. They literally mean ‘the five elements’, which are water, earth, fire, wind and air, or atmosphere.

A female Cambodian respondent is
explaining her understanding of the two
terms -- climate change and global warming

Therefore, the term ‘climate change’ (‘Kar PreProul Akas Theat’) can be understood as ‘weather changes’ (‘Kar PreProul Theat Akas’). This is important, given that ‘weather changes’ suggests short-term changes in the weather, whereas ‘climate change’ conveys changes in weather patterns over a longer period of time. It is unsurprising, then, that key informants frequently refer to isolated weather events, such as drought, or seasonal changes, to explain the term ‘climate change’. As one commune council leader explains, “Over the past few years, the climate has changed a lot but this year it has changed very much… in more than 65 years I met with climate change once. I do not remember the year, but when I was 13 or 14 years old, there was no rain until December. There was no rain for one year… We don’t know what causes it and we are not scientists.”

 ‘Kar Leung Kamdao Phen Dey’ is the Khmer translation of ‘global warming’, and means ‘the increase of heat on the earth’. ‘Phen Dey’ is the term for ‘planet earth’, while ‘dey’ means ‘earth’ in the sense of ‘soil’. It is possible that this term could be misunderstood to mean ‘the heating of the soil’, and so might be conflated with drought.

The ‘greenhouse effect’ and ‘greenhouse gases’ are particularly problematic terms. First, few Cambodian people have ever seen a greenhouse, so the expression does not function as a successful metaphor for the process of global warming in the Cambodian context. Instead, ‘greenhouse’ is translated as ‘glass house’, and this leads many to make connections between increasing temperatures and the increase in urban construction, or the more ubiquitous use of glass and reflective surfaces in building, machines, and motor vehicles. As one media representative explains, “I have heard the word. People said that because we use a lot of glass, it reflects heat from the sun. I don’t know whether it is right or wrong.”

Reference

BBC World Service Trust and the Ministry of Environment, (2011), Understanding Public Perceptions of Climate Change in Cambodia

The Adoption of Sen Pidao and Phka Rumduol Varieties

Rice is the most potential crop in Cambodian agriculture because her people daily eat rice as staple food; therefore, all almost farmers in the field cultivate it on their agricultural land. Although not growing for sale, they need rice for home food supply. To alleviate poverty in rural areas, the Royal Government of Cambodia in the fourth mandate has been implementing the improvement of agriculture in the first angle of Rectangular Strategy. To respond to an increase in food demand, in line with the government strategy, Cambodian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI) released two different aromatic varieties, Phka Rumduol in 1999 and Sen Pidao in 2002. An obvious casestudy in Otaky commune, Thmor Koul district, Battambang province, has been stated to investigate the production of these varieties.

Packed Phka Rumduol and Sen Pidao Varieties

Usually, farmers in Otaky commune do the farming between April and November. Through the study, they practice Phka Rumduol, Phka Knhey and Neang Khon in rainy season and do Sen Kror Ob and Phka Malis in early wet season. In rice production, they have two different cultivation methods: transplanting and direct seeding. In case of rainy season with transplanting method, if investing 1 Riel, they receive 1.346 Riels in return for Phka Rumduol, 1.131 Riels in return for Phka Knhey, (1.239 Riels in return for aromatic rice), and 1.089 Riels in return for nonaromatic rice Neang Khon. In another case of rainy season with direct-seeding cultivation method, if investing 1 Riel, they get 1.462 Riels in return for Phka Rumduol, 1.246 Riels in return for Phka Knhey, (1.354 Riels in return for aromatic rice), and 1.207 Riels in return for nonaromatic rice Neang Khon. In the last case of early wet season with direct-seeding cultivation method, if investing 1 Riel, they convert it into 1.451 Riels in return for Sen Kror Ob and 1.270 Riels in return for Phka Malis.

Sen Pidao Variety

Compared between aromatic-rice productions, the production in early wet season is more economic efficient than the one in rainy season both with transplanting and direct-seeding cultivation methods. However, looked into Phka Rumduol production, it is the most economically efficient among aromatic rice varieties. Unfortunately, it is photoperiod sensitivity, which is able to grow only in rainy season. Different from Phka Rumduol, Sen Pidao has been abandoned because this variety is not demanded by the local mills. It is reasoned that Sen Pidao’s grain is smaller than other aromatic varieties’, resulting in not able to be combined with others.

Reference

Trak, P., (2009), Factors Affecting the Efficiency and Adoption of Sen Pidao and Phka Rumduol Varieties of Project CARF-CARDI 162 in Otaky Commune, Thmor Koul District, Battambang Province

Mobile Phone Use in Cambodia

About 14 millions of Cambodian people are linked with advance technology. Nowadays phones play a main role in communication among the whole population.

A Cambodian youth is using his
two mobile phones simultaneously

A survey conducted by the BBC World Service Trust and the Cambodian Ministry of Environment, released in 2011, informs that 91% of Cambodians have access to a mobile phone. Among those people, 60% have their own mobile phone.

For non-mobile users, they have access to a mobile phone of their relatives (30%), phone booths (23%), spouses (13%), friends (8%), and neighbours (6%).

Mobile Phone Networks

Mobitel and Metphone are the leading mobile phone networks, which half of the respondents interviewed (52%) use.

Mobitel appears to have a significantly lower presence in Coastal and Mountain regions (28% and 31% respectively), while Metphone has a significantly higher presence in these areas (62% in Coastal and 67% in Mountain regions).

Mobile Phone Functions

One important function of a mobile phone that all Cambodians use is making and receiving calls. Besides the call function, they use phone to:

• Listen to music 60%
• Play with ring tones 50%
• Take photos 47%
• Send and receive SMS 45%
• Play games 39%
• Play with call tunes 33%
• Listen to radio 33%
• Record audio 29%

However, very few use their phones to access to the internet (5%).

Reference

BBC World Service Trust and the Ministry of Environment, (2011), Understanding Public Perceptions of Climate Change In Cambodia

I Am Proud To Be Cambodian

According to one national representative survey in 2010 conducted by the BBC World Service Trust with support from UNDP, almost all respondents interviewed (95%), in the age group of 15-24, said they were proud to be Cambodian.

A university student, 20

The majority of young people (81%) agreed that in Cambodia, everybody are respected equally. With this belief, there were more male than female youths (83%, 80%), particularly in the regions of Coastal (85%) and Mountain (86%).

More than 3 quarters of young respondents (80%) thought that Cambodia is going in the right direction, rather than wrong.

Reference

BBC World Service Trust and UNDP, (2010), Youth Civic Participation: Knowledge, Attitude, Practice, and Media

New Zealand ASEAN Scholars Awards

New Zealand ASEAN Scholars Awards empower individuals with the knowledge, skills and qualifications to contribute to economic, social and political development within ASEAN nations.

The New Zealand Government, through the New Zealand Aid Programme, provides scholarships for eligible post graduate students from Indonesia, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Viet Nam and the Philippines to undertake development-related studies at a tertiary education institution in New Zealand.

If you are currently working in the public, private or civil society sectors, you may be eligible to apply for a scholarship to study at a university or polytechnic in New Zealand.

When and How to Apply

Television, radio and newspaper advertising of the New Zealand ASEAN Scholars Awards scheme run throughout May 2011. Application forms are available from IDP Cambodia.
Applicants must submit their completed applications to IDP Cambodia by 5.00pm, 15 July 2011.

Eligibility Criteria

To be eligible for a New Zealand ASEAN Scholars Award, applicants must:
• be a citizen of Cambodia and be residing in Cambodia;
• be 35 years or younger at the time of application;
• hold a Bachelor’s degree, of strong academic merit, relevant to the proposed postgraduate qualification (Note: NZAID gives preference to candidates who do not already hold a graduate degree from an industrialised country);
• be applying to commence a new qualification (not seeking support for one already commenced);
• satisfy the admission requirements of the New Zealand education institution in which the qualification is to be undertaken, including English language criteria;
• have a minimum three years work experience in Cambodia in their relevant public, private or civil society sectors and at least two years of this must be after completion of their highest qualification;
• not have citizenship or permanent residence status for New Zealand, Australia or another developed country, or be married or engaged to be married to a person who holds, or who is eligible to hold, New Zealand or Australian citizenship or permanent residence status;
• not hold or have held a New Zealand Government or Australian Government scholarship in the preceding 24 months at the time of application (excluding previous NZAID English Language Training for Officials scholarship recipients);
• have a minimum IELTS (Academic) result of 5.5 overall, with no band less than 5.0*
(* Some candidates may be provided IELTS testing following their interview);
• be available to take up the scholarship in the calendar year for which the scholarship is offered.

Field of Study

In line with New Zealand’s country strategy for Cambodia, scholarships will be awarded in the following priority sectors:
• agriculture, forestry, fisheries, water resource management, environment and natural resources, rural development, development studies, bio-security (quarantine, phytosanitation), food science, veterinary studies
• sustainable tourism, eco-tourism, tourism management
• law, justice, legal and judicial reform, human/gender rights, social work
• trade policy, international trade, economics, business
• public sector development, public policy, public management
• governance
• health
• education

For further information, please click here

Agriculture as a Source of Food Security

With globalization and the expansion of trade, most countries can achieve their food security objectives through enhancing their capacity to purchase food on the international market. Inside the country, when food markets work, household food insecurity is an income problem, not a problem of producing more of one's own food.

However, food markets do not always work. One situation where this happens is poor countries with no foreign exchange generation capacity outside agriculture that must rely on their own capacity to produce to achieve  food security. This includes countries such as Ethiopia, Somalia, Niger, and Rwanda that have no mineral resources to import enough food to meet national needs. It also applies to households with weak connections to markets because infrastructure is deficient, they are in very remote areas, or find themselves unemployed. These countries and households thus face the challenge of securing at least part of their food needs through their own capacity to produce. The challenge becomes quite forbidding if the country or households have very limited productive assets or find themselves under failed states and unfavorable investment climates.

Reference

Byerlee, D., (2007), Agriculture for Development: the World Bank's 2008 World Development Report

Agriculture as a Source of Resources and Environmental Services for the Rest of Society

Agriculture is a major user of natural resources, in particular 85 percent of tapped fresh water and a third of the land area. Water is increasingly scarce and polluted, and the rapidly rising urban population demands access to water for consumers and industry. Making more efficient use of water in agriculture so some water can freed for other uses is another reason to invest in agriculture.

At the moment, through agricultural practices, livestock, and deforestation induced by expansion of the agricultural frontier, agriculture contributes some 30 percent of the green house gas (GHG) emissions that contributes to global climate change. Given the low value added per unit of GHG in agriculture compared to industry and services, it is good economics to compensate farmers not to emit these gases.

Agriculture can also contribute to watershed management for better water supply to reserviors, conservation of biodiversity in smallholder farming, and landscape improvement that offers recreation and attraction for tourism.

Reference

Byerlee, D., (2007), Agriculture for Development: the World Bank's 2008 World Development Report

Agriculture as a Source of Business Opportunities

Think here of supplying the supermarkets of Mexico or Beijing with fresh produce, exporting to Europe cut flowers from Ethiopia and green beans from Kenya, sweet peas from the highlands of Guatemala to the Safeways in the United States, and soybeans and biofuels from Brazil to the booming Chinese market. These are major business opportunities, that were often made possible by wise public investments in research to secure comparative advantage and by market infrastructure to support these transactions.

The challenge here is to turn these business opportunities into instruments for poverty reduction. This can be done by helping smallholders be part of the market booms, or by rural workers finding employment in agriculture and in the agro-processing sector. The Chile model where exports of fruits and wine to the whole world create major sources of employment in the agro-processing sector, especially for women, provides one of the most accomplished examples.

Reference

Byerlee, D., (2007), Agriculture for Development: the World Bank's 2008 World Development Report

Agriculture as an Instrument for Poverty Reduction

Agriculture is still a major of life for humanity. Half of the world's population lives in rural areas, 2.5 billion are related to agriculture for their survival, and 1.3 billion are smallholders. Some 70 percent of the world's poor and three fourth of the world's malnourished are located in rural areas among households who mainly depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. There is no way the Millennium Development Goal of halving extreme poverty between 1990 and 2015 will be met in Africa and South Asia (where the large majority of the world's poor are located) without an explicit focus on rural poverty.

Fortunately, agricultural productivity growth has proved to be exceptionally effective for poverty reduction. This is because farming is an activity dispersed in millions of small farms, many of the poorest of the poor are agricultural landless workers who depend on agriculture for employment, and food is the main expenditure for poor consumers so that cheaper food is a major boon for their welfare. In middle income countries like India, China, Morocco, and Indonesia, income gaps between rural and urban areas are rising rapidly, creating major frustrations among rural populations and eventual political instability and violence. Reducing income gaps thus becomes a political priority, calling on the powers of agricultural growth as one of the instruments to achieve this objective.

Reference

Byerlee, D., (2007), Agriculture for Development: the World Bank's 2008 World Development Report

Agriculture as a Source of National Economic Growth

This concept has been learned through the history of Western countries and Japan, where agricultural revolutions always preceded and supported the occurrence of industrial revolutions. More recently, the household responsibility system that marked the end of collectivization in China and the Green Revolution that multiplied yields of food grains by two or three in India allowed to accelerate agricultural growth, reduce poverty, and induce economic take-offs in other economic sectors, particularly industry in China and services in India.

This works as productivity growth in agriculture, frees labor for employment in industry and services, delivers cheap food for consumers, transfers savings and foreign exchange for investment in other sectors, and creates demand for the products of industry and services based on rising farmers' incomes.

As growth in other sectors accelerates, the share of agriculture in the economy and in total employment shrinks, a sign of success. In the poor countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, some 50 percent of the labor force. If agriculture fails to deliver more growth, little else can replace it.

Rice Cultivation in Cambodia

Reference

Byerlee, D., (2007), Agriculture for Development: the World Bank's 2008 World Development Report

the Greenhouse Effect

A greenhouse is a house with transparent plastic or glass roof and walls that is built to grow vegetables, flowers or other plants in temperate and colder countries. A greenhouse protects and provides heat to plants: its roof and walls allow sunlight to enter and prevent heat from escaping. This effect is known as the "greenhouse effect".

The earth's atmosphere contains some gases known as greenhouse gases, which occur naturally: water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and ozone (O3). The layers of these gases naturally present in the atmosphere acts as the roof of a greenhouse and trap heat close to the earth's surface. As a result, it maintains the mean temperature of the earth's surface at around 16 ^oC, which is crucial to ensuring climatic conditions that can support life of animals and plants on earth.

Since the industrial revolution, human activities have caused substantial increases in concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The main GHGs and their emission sources are:

• Carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas), and from deforestation;
• Methane from rice paddies, livestock, waste dumps, domestic sewage, coal mining;
• Nitrous dioxide mainly from chemical fertilizers used in intensive farming, and from fossil fuel combustion;
• Ozone in the lower atmosphere indirectly from automobile exhaust fumes;
• Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) from aerosol sprays, air conditioner and fridge coolants.

The increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere make the blanket or the "roof" around the earth thicker, which in turn prevents more and more heat from escaping into space. This disturbs the balance of heat exchange and causes the air temperature to rise and that of the earth's surface to rise.

In 1990, the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which consist of about 2,500 international scientists, confirmed that human activities have contributed to climate change. It also concluded that if current greenhouse gas emission trends continue, the mean global temperature will increase by 3^oC before the end of the 21st century.

Climate change is having serious impacts on agricultural production, water resources, human health, coastal areas, forest and ecosystems. Increasing floods, droughts, windstorms and other climate change related disasters, both in frequency and intensity, have caused enormous damages to many countries throughout the world.

the Ministry of Environment, (2010),  Climate Change and Clean Development Mechanism, Phnom Penh

The World Bank's 2008 World Development Report

The 2008 World Development Report will be on "Agriculture for Development in changing world". It argues that agriculture can play five essential functions for development: a source of overall economic growth, an instrument for poverty reduction, a business opportunity, a provider of environment services, and a tool for food security. Yet, these functions have been under-and mis-used, calling for major redress in the way governments and international donors use agriculture as a key instrument for development.

Agriculture has indeed been at the origin of multiple development successes, sometimes stunning like initiating accelerated growth and sustaining massive poverty reduction in China and India, the awakening giants that harbor some 40 percent of humanity. There are also disastrous failures in using the powers of agriculture as an instrument for development, most particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, which is cursed by continuing economic stagnation, mass poverty, pervasiveness of disastrous diseases such as HIV/AIDS, and the periodic recurrence of intolerable famines. So, how did agriculture help where it worked for development, and what could be done to make it work where it has to this day failed to deliver its development powers? This is the issue addressed in the World Development Report (WDR) 2008 by the World Bank.

Agriculture has five functions in economic development that make it totally unique. They are:

1. a source of national economic growth
2. an instrument for poverty reduction
3. an opportunity for profitable business investments
4. a source of natural resources for urban use and of environmental services
5. an instrument for food security in the poorest countries 

with no foreign exchange earnings to import their food needs.

Cambodian farmers are transplanting in their paddy field

Global Warming and Climate Change

The atmosphere surrounding our planet acts as a protective blanket for all life on earth. It provides carbon dioxide (CO2) for plant photosynthesis and oxygen (O2) for animal and human respiration. It also protects us from the effects of harmful cosmic rays and physical impacts of meteors from out space by absorbing most of these rays and disintegrating meteors by friction with air.

Historically, the climate has always dictated the way people live: housing, clothing, diet, agricultural practices, and some even believe that people's temperament is determined by the climate. In turn, the climate is regulated by many factors: the radiation and angle of the sun, the rotation of the earth, the geographical coordinates, the chemical composition of air masses, the proximity and size of the oceans, the regional topography etc. In particularly, these factors control air temperature and the amount and distribution of rainfall, which are the two most important aspects of the climate for a particular region. Changes in these factors will certainly lead to a change in global climate. This will subsequently cause an impact on the way we live.

For most of human history, changes in the earth's climate have resulted from natural causes over hundreds or even thousands of years. But since the industrial revolution over 200 years ago, human activities have come to affect the climate in serious and immediate ways - the increasing emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) into the atmosphere are intensifying a natural phenomenon called greenhouse effect. This results in long-term rising of the average temperature of the earth, which is called global warming.

the Ministry of Environment, (2010),  Climate Change and Clean Development Mechanism, Phnom Penh

Cambodians Are Feeling the Effects of Climate Change

On 10 May 2011 the Cambodian Ministry of Environment and the BBC World Service Trust released their latest research report, called 'Understanding Public Perceptions of Climate Change in Cambodia', at Sunway Hotel, Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

With reference to the report, Cambodians interviewed say that their weather and environment are changing and that people are feeling the effects. Most people associate weather changes with disease, farming difficulties, drought, increasing temperatures, decreased yields and water shortages. Almost everyone says their work is affected by the changing weather.

Many respondents reportedly have an incomplete or incorrect understanding of the causes of climate change. More than two-thirds (67%) of people surveyed think deforestation within Cambodia causes the weather to change. A few think that damage to the ozone layer is causing temperatures to increase. Very few have heard of the greenhouse effect.

Charles Hamilton, BBC WST Country Director in Cambodia, hands in the report to H.E. Dr. Mok Mareth, Minister of Environment