Cambodia Environment

Sexual division of labor patterns are similar in Khmer society now to what they were in pre-revolutionary days, but with increased flexibility. Men and women both engaged in a broad spectrum of tasks in pre-war society, though men or women may have tended to do one task more than the other. Now women do more of all sorts of tasks, while male labor tends to be concentrated in the areas that he traditionally performed.

One of the major changes is the emergence of an urban mercantile class of ethnic Khmer women. In the 1980 and early 90s Khmer women dominated in market selling in areas that were previously completely operated by ethnic Chinese and Vietnamese. While Khmer women had controlled small markets in the countryside in former times, they now dominated in the central markets and in many kinds of shops, from selling gold to importing household appliances. It is unclear whether or not this is still the case in Phnom Penh markets and shops since there has been a re-emergence of ethnic Chinese traders in the mid and late-1990s.

Women interviewed said that they usually hold the money in the household, letting their husbands keep small amounts of pocket money. They further said that economic decision making in the family was usually mutual, that is most decisions are made after discussion between the wife and the husband.

Garment Factories

One dramatic change in employment opportunities for women has come with the opening of garment factories in the 1990s. In 2000, 70 percent of Cambodia’s exports were garments, valued at $980 million. This sector provided jobs to some 160,000 workers, the vast majority young women (Cambodian Development Resource Institute [CDRI] 2001:1-2). Most of these workers are uneducated, young women who have come to the city from rural areas. CDRI found that with extensive overtime the women can make about $61 per month, half of which they spend on subsistence. In order to send money back home, they minimize their own spending. They suffer from frequent illnesses due to inadequate diet and long hours of overtime work (CDRI 2001:4). These circumstances seem to open dramatic possibilities for change from traditional gender roles. With these women living mainly with each other, there are no male relatives to "watch over" them. With their own limited earnings they may be making decisions on their own about the course of their lives in a way impossible in the past.

Prostitution

It is sometimes reported that prostitution came to Cambodia with the UNTAC mission in 1992-93. This is certainly untrue. As in neighboring Thailand, it was considered acceptable for men to visit prostitutes as their budget allowed; just as it was crucial for a woman to remain a virgin until married and thereafter be loyal only to her husband. In 1989-90, when I first lived in Cambodia, there were certain areas of the city that were the domain of prostitution, including the famous dike area in Tuol Kork. The prostitutes included both ethnic Khmer and many women from Vietnam.

But in 1992-93, during the UNTAC mission, prostitution expanded dramatically. UN staff had very high salaries and few places to spend their money. After the UN mission, the high levels of prostitution continued, in part because of a new demand for international sex tourism (in part related to the Thai sex industry), and in part because rising incomes among urban Khmer meant men had more cash to spend. With this explosion in sexual activity, and with newly opened borders -- including the border to Thailand, which was in the grips of an epidemic – HIV/AIDs also burst on the Cambodian scene. Today Cambodia has one of the highest infection rates in Asia, 2.8 percent of the population.

Khmer women have always been co-workers with men in the production of rice. Because their days are filled with agricultural labor, women often rise at very early hours to do household duties before they leave for the fields. Women in the vegetable growing areas report getting up at 3 or 4 am in order to clean the house before beginning to carry water to their fields for several hours before the heat of the day. Women in the city report getting up at 5 or 5:30 and doing their laundry, house cleaning and other household tasks before going to their workplaces. They do the shopping on the way home from work late morning, cook the mid-day meal, work in the afternoon, cook again, and do household tasks again before retiring. The image from all of my research over the years is of women in constant motion.

The literature on women in development around the world presents similar pictures of women doing "double duty," engaging in agricultural labor or wage employment, and taking care of the household tasks. There are however some unique characteristics of the Khmer situation.

Because women are the only wage earners in many families, children, especially girl children, end up taking on many of the household tasks, which means that more girls do not receive an education. The dramatic success of Khmer women in business has meant that in many families the income from the woman's trade is far higher than the husband's income from government service. Many officials will admit that they live on their wife's income from some form of market selling.

One reason women in Southeast Asia are often judged to be treated within their societies as "relatively equal" to men, is that most societies in the region have kinship systems that are organized bilaterally. People who are related to either the bride or the groom are considered to be relatives (this is in contrast to patrilineal or matrilineal where the couple after marriage are considered to be related only to the husband's or to the wife's side respectively). Bilateral kinship is the most familiar system to western observers, since our own family organization is also structured in this way. In a bilateral system there exists a large body of people to whom one is related, and whom one can call on for support. This body of people constitute a large pool of relatives called "bang p’aun " in Khmer, meaning literally "the olders and the youngers." Khmer often do not know the exact relationship of an individual to them, only that they are somehow "bang p’aun ". This category can also be extended through the establishment of fictive kin relationships where people "become" relatives by promising their allegiance to one another.

After marriage, Khmer express a stated preference for going to live with the family of the bride (uxorilocality). Traditionally a man would have had to do brideservice of two or three years for the bride's family before the wedding. The young man would have lived with and worked for the girl’s family, so they would have known him well. Khmer say that this pattern is safer for the girl who is afraid to leave her family. Although uxorilocality is the ideal, research shows that Khmer in fact are very pragmatic and go to live where the conditions are most favorable for the couple. According to Ebihara (1977), Khmer residency patterns are more likely to be the result of a process over time, rather than a single decision. Immediately after the wedding the couple will live with either the family of the groom or the bride, with slightly more choosing the bride's family. Whether or not they stay in that household will depend in part on where they are likely to inherit a house and land and where elderly parents need to be cared for. Over time many young couples will move out and establish their own separate residences.

Residence with or near the relatives of the woman's side can reinforce her position within the marriage and put the couple on more equal footing. If, for example, there is a problem of domestic violence, the woman will have relatives close by on whom she can call for protection. In a less extreme example, a women can influence family decisions by having relatives nearby who can help to accomplish a particular task in the way that she prefers.

The parents of the couple traditionally arranged marriages. The Khmer say "num min thom cheang nil ," the cake is not bigger than the scale; meaning that children do not know better than their parents how to make such judgements. Today young people are generally given a say in the matter, at least the right to refuse someone they find unacceptable. The young couple may know each other, in which case the proper procedure is for the young man to ask his parents to approach the parents of the woman. Marriages are not seen as the joining of two individuals, but as the linking of two families -- and their extended family networks. Marriage arrangements are often openly strategic; people hope to marry into families that are wealthy and/or well connected.

Brideservice was replaced in the 20th century by bridewealth, money paid from the family of the groom to the family of the bride. The money is used for the wedding arrangements, and often the balance is given to the couple as money to establish a household. This money was sometimes referred to as "the price of the mother’s milk" or "the worth of a house" (Ebihara1968: 471-472).

Given the demographic situation discussed above, recently there were opportunities for young men to improve their social status and that of their family by marrying wisely. The range of choices open to men was greater than that for women, particularly over the age of 25 or so, when it becomes almost certain that the woman will never marry. In the 1990s, some weddings involved waiving the bridewealth, or allowing the bride’s family quietly to slip a portion of the payment to the groom’s family in advance, only to have it ceremoniously returned during the course of the marriage negotiations.

In the countryside, households are often multigenerational. In the past, a couple might live with their children and a surviving parent or parents. After the Khmer Rouge regime, there were more variations on this form of extended household, with people taking in kinsmen in need, siblings, aunts, and so on – particularly widows (see Ebihara and Ledgerwood 2002).

Between 1.7 and two million Cambodian died during the war years in the early 1970s and during the years of Democratic Kampuchea, from 1975 to 1979. During the Khmer Rouge period, people died of starvation and disease as well as from execution. More women than men survived the traumas of this period. Women are better able to survive conditions of severe malnutrition, fewer women were targeted for execution because of connections to the old regime, and fewer women were killed in battles. Many women told me that they survived those years of horror because they had to care for their children (see Ebihara and Ledgerwood 2002).

During the 1980s and early 90s, men continued to be drained off from society to go to serve as soldiers. This was particularly evident in rural areas where one could enter a village and find no men between the ages of about 15 and 50. Many men were killed or disabled, others might still have been alive but were off with their military units, with resistance factions at the border, or hiding from conscription.

What this meant was large numbers of widows and older women who had not married before the Khmer Rouge period who subsequently never married. There were significantly higher numbers of women than men in the adult population. The most commonly cited figures in the early 1990s were that 64% of the adult population was female and women head 35% of the households nationwide. Ledgerwood (1992), found a figure of 25% female-headed households in certain areas. Other parts of the country that were particularly devastated by fighting, on the other hand, ratios were higher. In the wet-rice growing area where we conducted research, widows headed 41% of the households. Other studies have noted that it was not rare to find villages where the figure was 50% (UNICEF 1990:111).

What this meant was a severe shortage of male labor power. Women were forced to take on various tasks that were previously performed primarily by men. This included tasks in the countryside such a plowing and other preparations for cultivation. It also included work in urban areas, particularly employment within the state bureaucracy. According to Boserup, in 1962, less than 1% of Khmer women were employed in "clerical" or "administrative" positions (1970:241?) In 1990 one third of the Khmer state employees were women (UNICEF 1990), though the higher in rank, the lower the female to male ratio. It is not clear the degree to which the sex ratio within the state bureaucracy is returning to pre-war patterns now that the national sex ratio is returning to normal.

Throughout the 1990s, the gender ratio evened out dramatically. Nationwide statistics for 1995 showed a population over twenty years of age that was 48 percent male and 52 percent female; the 1998 census showed a total population that was 51.8 percent female (UNFPA 1995: 5-7, National Institute of Statistics 1999). In part this reflects the extremely high birth rate during the 1980s and 90s, 2.5 to 3 percent annually. Ebihara and Ledgerwood have also argued that the rapid correction of these statistics must reflect in part the undercounting of men during the 1980s and early 90s. After the Paris Peace Agreement and the 1993 UN sponsored elections, many men returned home from military service (whether or not they were recorded as formally having left their posts). Men also returned from the resistance factions on the border. And men were also free to live openly in rural villages again because of the end of conscription (see Ebihara and Ledgerwood 2002:279-280).

Before one begins discussion of the place of women in Cambodia, one needs to understand something of the hierarchical nature of Khmer society. All relations in Khmer society are organized hierarchically. The nature of the language itself reflects this; pronouns are not neutral but express the status of the speaker and the person addressed. Common verbs, particularly the verb "to eat" similarly show the relationship between the person who is speakingjavascript:void(0) and the person who is being addressed or referenced. Where other factors are relatively equal, the markers of place within society that take precedent are age and sex. People usually refer to one another by kinship terminology that reflects the age and sex of the person who is referenced. Thus people call a cyclo driver "uncle" and a waitress "younger sister". In terms of status, age is more important than sex. For example, the common terms for siblings in a family are "older" and "younger", recognizing the overriding importance of birth order; in contrast to the English terms "brother" and "sister" which place a greater emphasis on sex. Young people must show respect to their elders, both male and female.

Social status is also related to a range of other factors which include: wealth, reputation of the family, political position, employment, the character of the individual and religious piety (see Ebihara 1968 and Ledgerwood 1990). Where a person falls within the society hierarchy is a combination of all of these different elements. Gender is only one of a range of factors that influences where a person is ranked in Khmer society.

This system of conceptions of status is rooted in Buddhist ideas of merit and karma. A person's level in society is a product of their activities in previous lifetimes and their activities in this life will similarly effect subsequent incarnations. A high ranking person in this life is thus a person full of merit and should demonstrate this meritorious nature by redistributing his goods and interceding on behalf of those who are less fortunate than himself. The social order is thus also a moral order, with implied moral duties. Khmer society is organized around followers attaching themselves to persons of higher status.

Between 1993 and 1996, the Government of Cambodia enacted several key pieces of environmental legislation to establish the legal framework to control, use and manage its natural resources and urban environment. The Ministry of Environment (MoE) is the key agency responsible for environmental protection and natural resources conservation, while the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) is responsible for forest management. Roles and responsibilities among different government agencies overlap in functional areas such as land tenure administration, coastal and marine resource management, wildlife conservation, and protected area management. These overlaps, as well as shortages in skilled staff and insufficient budget allocations, constrain the government’s ability to sustainably manage its natural resources and environment. However, Cambodia's environmental institutions have become more open to public participation, which was made mandatory, as part of the EIA approval process, in 1999.

The World Bank is helping to increase environmental capacity and information with a range of analytical and advisory services. These include the publication of annual country Environment Monitors and by helping the government better understand poverty- environment linkages through a Poverty-Environment Nexus Study.

As the country grows economically, more and more people gravitate towards urban centers in provinces such as Phnom Penh, Kandal, Prey Veng, and Takeo. The resulting higher quantities of untreated urban domestic sewage, industrial effluent and solid waste are polluting surface and ground water in many of Cambodia’s cities and towns. Throughout the country, sewerage system coverage is limited and/or no longer functioning, resulting in increased health risks to urban and peri-urban populations, including higher incidences of diarrhea and cholera.

In addition, the growth of unplanned settlements outside of Phnom Penh is increasing pressure on the city’s existing wastewater infrastructure and the system of natural drainage, which to date has served as the traditional environmental safeguard against flooding. Many flood protection sleeves have been occupied by migrants, restricting water flows and compounding the sanitation problem.

The disposal of hazardous (mostly industrial) waste is also a growing problem in Phnom Penh. There are no special landfills or other treatment facilities for toxic, hazardous or medical waste, which is often burned at open dumpsites, together with solid waste.

The World Bank’s principal initiative in this area is the Provincial and Peri-Urban Water and Sanitation Project. It is financing water supply systems in provincial towns and districts, public toilets (in schools, markets, and hospitals), household toilets, soak-away pits for septic tank effluent and wastewater disposal. Assistance to prepare a wastewater strategy and master plan for Phnom Penh and a possible follow-up wastewater management project is under discussion.

The forests of Cambodia are diverse and comprise a variety of evergreen, deciduous, mixed and mangrove forest types. Current estimates of remaining natural forest cover vary considerably, but the consensus is that about half of Cambodia’s land area has some form of forest cover. Weak governance and unsustainable resource use, shifting cultivation in the upland areas, especially in the northeast of the country, and forest clearing for agriculture are causing rapid deforestation. As a result, Cambodia’s rich natural habitats have been significantly degraded, affecting the quality and quantity of habitat for biodiversity and non-timber forest resources, both important elements of food and livelihood security.

Cambodia’s coastal, marine and freshwater resources are also being degraded by a combination of river and coastal sedimentation (often linked to logging), conversion of mangroves, poorly managed shrimp aquaculture and salt farming and dynamite fishing. Pressures on aquatic resources and on environmentally-significant wetlands are also increasing rapidly, most notably from over-fishing, illegal fishing practices, increasing use of hazardous pesticides, and conversion of flooded forests, as well as swamp drainage for agriculture.

World Bank assistance on natural resource management focuses on forest management, land titling and biodiversity conservation. A Forest Concession Management and Control Pilot Project is helping Cambodia establish an effective logging concession management system and reduce illegal logging. A Land Management and Administration Project is being implemented to improve citizens’ land security and create an efficient land market by providing 1 million families with land titles. Finally, the Biodiversity and Protected Area Project is helping design and build the capacity to operate a well-managed national protected area system.

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Urban Environmental Challenges

As the country grows economically, more and more people gravitate towards urban centers in provinces such as Phnom Penh, Kandal, Prey Veng, and Takeo. The resulting higher quantities of untreated urban domestic sewage, industrial effluent and solid waste are polluting surface and ground water in many of Cambodia’s cities and towns. Throughout the country, sewerage system coverage is limited and/or no longer functioning, resulting in increased health risks to urban and peri-urban populations, including higher incidences of diarrhea and cholera.

In addition, the growth of unplanned settlements outside of Phnom Penh is increasing pressure on the city’s existing wastewater infrastructure and the system of natural drainage, which to date has served as the traditional environmental safeguard against flooding. Many flood protection sleeves have been occupied by migrants, restricting water flows and compounding the sanitation problem.

The disposal of hazardous (mostly industrial) waste is also a growing problem in Phnom Penh. There are no special landfills or other treatment facilities for toxic, hazardous or medical waste, which is often burned at open dumpsites, together with solid waste.

The World Bank’s principal initiative in this area is the Provincial and Peri-Urban Water and Sanitation Project. It is financing water supply systems in provincial towns and districts, public toilets (in schools, markets, and hospitals), household toilets, soak-away pits for septic tank effluent and wastewater disposal. Assistance to prepare a wastewater strategy and master plan for Phnom Penh and a possible follow-up wastewater management project is under discussio

Sustainable use of Cambodia’s natural resources is a key factor to the country’s development. Approximately three-quarters of the population are directly engaged in agriculture and depend upon the land for their daily subsistence. Agriculture and forestry contribute nearly 40 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Tourism, which is based on the country’s cultural and natural wonders, also contributes significantly to economic development. Reliance on these industries means that sustainable management of natural resources and other aspects of the environment are vital for improving rural livelihoods and for economic growth.

Under the honorary patronage of the Most Venerable Samdech Maha Ghosananda, KEAP's honorary founding patron, a dozen Cambodian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) led by Ven. Nhem Kim Teng, Cambodia's "ecology monk," are endeavoring to help save Cambodia's environment through the network of Buddhist temples in the country. Initial technical and financial assistance to produce training materials for this project was provided through the United Nations Development Programme's Environmental Technical Advisory Programme (ETAP), whose environmental education unit was coordinated by KEAP's founder and executive director, Peter Gyallay-Pap. The UNDP program closed as scheduled at the end 1998 and the actual training and follow-up/application phases of the project are still awaiting implementation. Anticipated follow-up support from governmental donors did not materialize due in the aftermath of the 1997 political and military unrest that ousted Cambodia's elected First Prime Minister, Prince Norodom Rannaridh. Your support can ensure that this program can continue and thereby have a long-term positive impact on Cambodia's environment and quality of life. The purpose of the program is to train hundreds of monks in core district and sub-district (commune) temples to mobilize the people to learn about, protect, and improve their local environments while also putting moral pressure on the country's leaders to stop the plunder of Cambodia's resources.

The first, or materials development phase of the project was completed in early 1999 by the NGO working group with assistance from the Buddhist Institute's EESEAP (see above) and technical and financial assistance from ETAP. Produced were a color-illustrated community learning tool, A Cry from the Forest, targeted at the local populations served by the temple; a smaller, supplementary text for all the monks and nuns affiliated with a wat; and learning tapes, which includes a Khmer-dubbed video of Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh produced by the International Society for Ecology and Culture. The next phase in the project, for which funding is desperately needed lest this program lose momentum, is training the headmonks and/or deputy headmonks of core temples at district-level workshops. These four-day residential workshops are conducted by the monk master trainers with technical backstopping from the local NGOs participating in the consortium. The cost for organizing and conducting a residential (5-6 nights) workshop for some 30 participants, representing 15 core temples, is approximately $1,500 - or $100 per temple. The expected outcome of the workshops are monks and in some cases also nuns equipped with and able to use training materials and to lead learning-and-doing activities to protect and enhance the local environment served by the temples. This self-help participatory process through the temples will also help strengthen civil society structures in the country; promote the healing, reconciliation, and renewal process; and provide hope for a more sustainable future.

Sponsor a life-supporting environmental education workshop through a local Cambodian NGO

Hun Sen issued a warning to the daring Thai troops stationed along the border near Preah Vihear temple. He said that if Thai soldiers want to fight to take back Preah Vihear temple, Thai army must prepare to bring in at least 30,000 to 50,000 of its soldiers. Hun Sen made this declaration at the National Education Institute in the morning of Tuesday 30 June 2009. Hun Sen claimed that he told Suthep Thaugsuban, Thailand’s deputy-PM, and Prawit Wongsuwan, Thailand’s defense minister, during their private visit with him last Saturday, that if Thailand wants to fight to take back Preah Vihear temple, Thailand will need at least 30,000 to 50,000 troops to fight against 10,000 battle-scarred Cambodian soldiers. Hun Sen added that Thailand counts a population of 70 million and an army of more than 300,000 men, whereas Cambodia counts a population of 14 million and an army of about 100,000 men. Therefore, if Thailand wants to attack Cambodian troops, they have to bring in a force of 30,000 to 50,000 soldiers to fight the 10,000-strong Cambodian troops.