Cambodia has made notable paces in reducing poverty and advancing human development. However, a significant portion of the population remains susceptible to poverty, food insecurity, malnutrition, and various shocks. The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, coupled with the global food and fuel crisis and recent climate-related events, has exacerbated the already fragile conditions for many, especially marginalised communities.The Tonle Sap Lake and Cambodia’s Mekong Delta are crucial for sustaining a rich diversity of fish species, rice cultivation, and local livelihoods, while […]

Key MessagesMigrants were mainly young adults, with men doing high-risk jobs like construction and women doing less risky jobs such as factory work. Migrant households’ livelihoods are affected by unpredictable weather conditions, reduced water availability, and extreme events like heatwaves, droughts and floods, which lowered crop yields and fish stocks. This led to income loss and financial instability, especially for farming households. Migration was primarily driven by economic hardships, including poverty, job scarcity, and debt. Yet, these hardships were worsened by climate […]

The uneven burden of climate-related losses and damages and its implications for equity and social justice are receiving growing attention in science and policy. Smallholder farmers, indigenous groups, and ethnic minorities are often identifed as particularly vulnerable and likely to experience a greater burden of climate-related loss and damage. However, limited attention has been paid to experiences of climate-related loss and damage in contexts of agrarian change and related struggles, especially around land. In this paper, we analyse experiences of climate-related […]

The transnational mobility of people, information, and resources is critical to the success of nonprofit international development projects. Ensuring effective transnational flows arguably takes on greater salience for grassroots international nongovernmental organisations (GINGOs), as these organisations and their leaders are unlikely to have a full-time presence in their intervention sites, instead tending to have short-term, episodic presences in the communities they serve. This is especially true among GINGOs active the health sector that provide healthcare services transnationally in the form […]

Cambodia has experienced significant economic growth and improved living standards over the last two decades, and gender equality has also improved, especially on outcomes such as girls and women’s human capital accumulation in education. However, the impacts of climate change could put the hard-earned economic development gains including those of women, at risk. Climate change impacts are profoundly uneven; women in low-income communities and other vulnerable groups are disproportionately affected because of social and economic factors that increase their vulnerability. […]

Migration forces rural people to find more and better jobs, which is key in generating incomes to sustain livelihoods and ensure food security in times of environmental change. In addition to agricultural production, climate change affects health, water, and energy resources and causes migration and conflict. The impacts of climate change on men and women can also differ in terms of employment, natural resource management, social norms, gender stereotypes, socio[1]economic opportunities, and adaptation to new technologies. Greenhouse gas emissions from […]

Water is central for a variety of livelihoods, development, economic growth, and food production. It is also very important in the large deltas of South and Southeast Asia. Yet, water is turning into a scare resource and global climate change is making its availability more unpredictable. Commercial interests and infrastructure development are also competing for water resources, sometimes at the expense of local smallholders.This report, which is a desk study combined with stakeholder interviews, aims to map out the issues […]

This flagship publication is the result of a regional two-year research project entitled: “Enhancing Research and Dialogue on Contract Farming in the Mekong-Lancang Countries”. It represents a close collaboration between CDRI and project partners – the China Agricultural University (CAU), Kasetsart University (Thailand), and the Institute of Policy and Strategy for Agriculture and Rural Development (IPSARD) (Vietnam). The project explored and documented best practices in contract farming, successes, failure factors and lessons learned from each country, as well as providing […]

Voluntary contributions to public goods are vulnerable to free riding. A potential solution is the implementation of a costly institutional arrangement that deters free riding behavior. In this paper, we analyze to what extent resource users are willing to bear those costs and vote in favor of costly institutions. We carried out lab-in-the-field experiments with Cambodian farmers in the Kampong Chhnang province. In the first experiment, the subjects played public goods games, with an option to vote for a costly […]

In the Mekong-Lancang basin, intergovernmental scientific water data sharing has progressively expanded between governments since the early 1990s as an outcome of water diplomacy efforts. Much of this scientific water data has been made public via online platforms.Water data underpins water diplomacy, including through trust building and providing evidence. It is crucial in the Mekong-Lancang basin given changing river conditions due to large dam operations, climate change and other development trends that have intensified hydropolitics in recent years.As water data […]

To accelerate progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goal on clean water and sanitation, the focus of WASH programming in developing countries has shifted from a traditional infrastructure approach to a more systems-based approach. Greater emphasis on a systems approach has also drawn attention to the significant role played by local leadership in developing sustainable WASH systems. Building on the evidence of the effectiveness of leaders trained through the Civic Champions Program, an innovative leadership development program in Cambodia, this […]

The escalating climate change-related disasters around the world are a serious threat to human existence and human livelihoods. Rural people living in developing countries, especially those of the poorest, are believed to be particularly vulnerable to climate change. As the number of climate change programs designed to help the poorer households has grown, concern has also arisen over their ability to participate and the extent to which they benefit from those programs. There is limited documented evidence on whether climate […]