General

The project is to support the poor and disadvantaged IPs communities in Preah Vihear, Rattanakiri, and Siem Reap province to become self-reliant in managing their natural resources and participating in community development. For many years that Indigenous Communities in Cambodia have been supported to claim their rights to legally own their forested land and protected areas. Though not many of them have been granted legal ownership by the government, those who has legally secured official recognition are not able to enforce their rights to protect their resources from being exploited by outsiders. Some communities already have their strength to apply for legal support from the government, but they do not use it for their own development. It has shown that participation from the whole community members remains very limited. Therefore, their local natural resources are not well managed, and cases of illegal logging, fishing, and land grabbing persist. To support communities to address these issues, the project will be piloting a new approach PAR (Participatory Action Research) as a community-led development process that involves communities in the whole process of project life cycle from problem analysis to project implementation by their own capacity and resources. Through PAR process, the partner acts as good listener, clearly understands communities, and facilitates people to have critical thinking about priority issues, analyse root causes, find out solutions from one to another, and mobilise existing resources within communities. The partner will be spending the first 3 months of the project to do a participatory project design from which community initiatives will be developed into a proposal and implementation. At the end of the project, ability and capacity of local communities will be improved. And, they will be empowered to come up with initiatives, own their plans, mobilise local resources and work collectively to protect and manage natural resources in a sustainable manner. The project objectives are: - To strengthen capacity of target IPs community members to be able to develop their own initiatives, community development action plans, and to engage with all stakeholders to implement their action plans. - IP people (45% women) in 4 communities exercise and advocate for their rights to protect and manage their natural resources sustainably in order to promote their livelihood prosperity, and conserve their tradition, culture celebration, and solidarity practice in their communities. This project also complements well to the existing work that has been built with DPA on legal land and resources tenure of indigenous communities in Cambodia. And, the partner ADIC works to empower both legally recognised communities and non to advocate for and enforce their land rights.

Objectives

To scale up the adoption of sustainable land management (SLM) in production landscapes across Mauritius and Rodrigues.

Other

Note: Disbursement data provided is cumulative and covers disbursement made by the project Agency.

General

Viet Nam has a total area of 33.1 million hectares and a population of 96.2 million people, comprising 54 ethnic groups. Viet Nam GLA partners will implement the programme in the Central Highlands (CHs), an area about 400-1,500m above sea level which accounts for 16.5% of the land and 6% of the population. Despite numerous development policies, most IPLCs have poor livelihoods, unsecured and degraded forest resources, and are somewhat marginalized economically, culturally and politically. Women and girls are suffering most from the situation. The selected landscapes are located in four of the Central Highlands: Dak Lak, Gia Lai, Kon Tum, and Lam Dong provinces with a total area of 4.85 million hectares and about 45% forest cover. Much of the land is the watershed of the Srepok River which plays an important role in local ecosystems, biodiversity, and soil and water protection for lower provinces. At present, deforestation and forest degradation in the CHs is alarming due to agricultural expansion, illegal exploitation, and forestland conversion for other purposes . The CHs are the home of many native peoples including the Jarai, Ede, Bana, K’Ho, and M’nong. These peoples account for 26% of the total 6.2 million people of the CHs. Since 1960, the life of native peoples has been disturbed in terms of environment, culture, and livelihood due to resettlement and biased development policies. At present, IPLCs in CHs are among the poorest people in the country. Unfortunately, the current loss of the forests – the foundation of IPLC’s cultures and livelihoods – exacerbates further the hardship of native peoples.

Objectives

The GLA programme in Viet Nam has three long-term objectives i) IPLCs have their livelihoods sustained ecologically and economically; ii) Local authorities and businesses reduce IPLC’s forestland conversion for other purposes; iii) IPLCs including women and youth are able to participate and voice up in policy decision making process at all levels. To achieve this, the partners will promote forest land allocation to communities, support local governments and other landscape actors in the sustainable management of their landscapes and in sustainable livelihood development, and empower IPLCs, including women and youth, to participate better in decision-making processes at the landscape and national level.