Finland Futures Research Centre
Knowledge for Development: Creating Rural Resource Database for Sustainable Livelihoods in Cambodia and Laos (SURVEY) 2009-2010
In Cambodia and Laos about 85 per cent of the population live in the rural areas and about one third of the people live by less than one dollar per day. The poorest communities reside in remote rural areas, living in self-subsistence economies, and with insufficient access to basic development resources such as electricity. Rural households often lack sustainable food production systems that would ensure the access to affordable and nutritious food at all times. Communities have little resources to adapt to social, environmental and economic changes such as environmental degradation and climate change, or increasing fuel and commodity prices.
Laotian and Cambodian governments are committed to Millennium Development Goals and reducing extreme poverty, and are here assisted by development partners. One of the challenges facing the governments and development organisations is lack of knowledge with respect to rural natural resources and livelihood development. There is little basic nationwide data on rural natural resources, their present and potential use, local decision-making on these resources, and the distribution of benefits and constrains. Without nationwide baseline data the governments and development planners encounter difficulties in predicting natural resource consumption in the future, which impedes the policy planning. Also the relationships and causalities between rural resources base and climate change adaptation needs and greenhouse gas mitigation potentials remain undetected.
The primary objective of this research project is to provide basic data on rural resources and livelihood strategies in Cambodia and Laos that would support climate sensitive and sustainable natural resource policies and improved development assistance for poverty reduction. The core of this research attempt is the survey, which consists of 4000 household and village headmen interviews conducted mainly in the rural areas of Cambodia and Laos.
The survey consists of questions on the use of natural resources for livelihood (agricultural, forest, water, and energy); human resources (education, skills, division of labour, migration potential to urban areas); local institutions (decision-making, ownership and use rights of the natural resources); means to cope with unexpected constrains such as illness or crop failure; abilities and potential for livelihood diversification, including e.g. energy crop plantations. Besides survey questions, also open questions are made for villagers and village headmen in order to further elaborate livelihood issues. The data will be mostly collected by Indochina Research Ltd, which is an experienced regional research company.
The data is gathered to databases which are used for analysing the sustainability of rural livelihood in Cambodia and Laos, as well as the patterns and causalities between food security/climate change issues and rural resources base. Equally importantly the databases and the statistics provide long-term support in formulation of development assistance programmes and national policymaking.
The Project is funded by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland.
Project staff
- Juha-Pekka Snäkin, Team Leader, Senior Researcher
- Hanna Kaisti, Project Manager
- Jenny Turunen, Researcher
Contact the research team members by email: firstname.lastname@tse.fi
External specialists
- Stefano Piergiulio Magistretti, Senior Researcher
e-mail: smagis(at)btopenworld.com - Chinda Mang (BA), Researcher
FINLAND FUTURES RESEARCH CENTRE