Royal University of Phnom Penh Master Program in Sociology-Anthropology Major in Rural Development

1. Royal University of Phnom PenhMaster Program in Sociology-AnthropologyMajor in Rural Development Thesis Proposal Contesting Meanings of Forest Resource Management in Development Context (A Case Study in Prey Long Village, Tumring Commune, Sandan District, Kampong Thom Province)

2. 1- Background of the study and problem statement • More than 300 million indigenous, local and peasant people live close to and depend on forest ecosystems (World Bank Forest Policy 1990) • However, the expertise and interests of these local people are rarely recognized by national forest policies and management systems • They (local people) are often accused of being the main agents of forest destruction, and their position is further marginalized • Instead, government institutions tend to be viewed as the principal actors in forest conservation and restoration

3. Cont- • It has been seen that Cambodia government claims control over forest resources, largely ignoring the customary rights of forest communities and thus eroding traditions, responsibilities and decision-making structures at the local level • Local people face pressure from outsiders who seek land, timber or other resources; they are exposed to intimidation, violence and culture shock; and they confront internal problems about balancing forest exploitation and conservation • In the past history; particularly in the late 1980s, forest logging bans in Thailand led to Cambodian forest destruction as Thai generals made alliances with Khmer Rouge leaders (Bruce McKenney, et al 2004).

4. Since the mid-1990s, the current government has begun renting large tracts of forest to private concessionaires in exchange for much-needed foreign revenue • In addition, unregulated and illegal timber smuggling has resulted in high volumes of logs being transported across the Thai and Vietnamese borders (Community Forest Management Working Groups 2000 in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam) • In 1996, a sub-decree was drafted relevant to community forestry (CF) • Effective CF policies and programs will contribute to clarifying tenure rights and management responsibilities over the public forest domain

5. However, even though Forest Law has been adopted, there are still conflicts over forest resource management and conservation through the process of law implementation • In development context of Cambodia, a study on local understandings of government’s policies and their impacts on villagers’ strategies in resource management can provide more negotiation space to realize cooperation between the state and community. • In terms of the development policy and the conservation from outside, two problems might happen at local level • One is the lacking of an understanding of local ecological complexity, dynamic local livelihood and the ignorance of local people’s problems from development project. • The other is that local people do not have access to sustainable resource management and the basic rights in resource utilization.

6. 2- Research Questions • What are the impacts of development projects on environmental change and tenure system in resource management and the livelihood of local people at the present time? • How can local people or communities maintain the balance between their societies and forest environments when confronted with the population growth, increasing demands for basic needs and cash, and increasingly stronger external pressures? • How and what do villagers express their ideas through development practices in production that reflect the local system of sustainable resource management? • What is the role of local NGOs in the community in terms of sustainable resource management? In what way is the government involved in the problem taking place?

7. 3- Research Objectives • In order to verify with the above research questions, in my study I have set some objectives as follows: • To see the impacts of the government’s policy on local people’s livelihood and the limitation of existing property regime in resource management. • To find out what is the context of the community’s idea on sustainable development and what they think the development projects mean to them. • To investigate how people use the negotiation knowledge for access to resources as development practice to the government’s policies of conservation.

8. 4- Rationale of the Study • Developers or state development agencies can learn from how development should be in context of discourse of sustainable development in local level. • Local people are able to know and learn from other countries’ experience on their resource conservation through the understanding of their access to their natural resource tenure and understand the changing of the state’s policy in development. • Throughout the use of negotiation space and language of discourse of sustainable development both sides, state development agencies or developers and local people or communities can learn from each other, so that they can lead to common perspective in natural resource management and conservation.

9. 5- Literature Review of Related Theories and Concepts • In order to look at my study, 3 theories have been employed: • Development as Discourse (Discourse of Conservation) • Development Practice • Access

10. 5-1 Development as Discourse (Discourse of Conservation) • Many scholars, sociologists, ecologists; and especially environmentalists have recently acknowledged discourse analysis as an useful tool for the role of collectively held beliefs in the social sciences (Escobar, 1995 vii) • Foucault agued that a discourse consists a group of statements linked to a ‘referential’, itself consisting of ‘laws of possibility, rules of existence for the objects that are named, designed or described within it, and for the relations that are affirmed or denied in it’ (Grillo, 1997, 12)

11. As noted by Peet and Hartwick, “Foucault was particularly interested in the careful, rationalized, organized statements made by experts – what he called discourse” (Peet & Hartwick, 1999, 129-130). • In making this case, Foucault asserts that nation-state actors rationalize what they believe to be the universal truth, using this “truth” to frame their behavior accordingly. This “truth is not outside of power … Each society has its own regime of truth, its general politics of truth” (Foucault & Gordon, 1980, 131). • In this context, even though Foucault sought to understand discourse at the level of society as a whole, this thesis focuses on the state development project in local level, especially those people who are directly affected by the project and how they interpret sustainable development in local context.

12. Power Relation • According to Foucault’s interpretation of discourse one must pay attention to the factor of power in the discursive process involved with development • Noted by Brigg, ‘development is combined with the contemporary modality of power that works by bringing forth and promoting the forces and energies of human subjects • In effect, modern states and the elites that inspire the discourse have the power of making decision of what is truth and what is not, so the state serves as ‘a fulcrum for operations of power in the development dispositif’ (Brigg, 2002, 433; Melkote, 2003, 133).

13. Language and Symbol • Development communication can become a space for the systematic creation of concepts, theories, and practices (Escobar, 1995: 39) • A vast institutional network defines a perceptual domain, the space of development (Peet and Hartwick, 1999: 147) • Escobar agrees, claiming that language has almost universally changed global perceptions about development: ‘Development … achieved the status of a certainty in the social imaginary’ (1995: 5)

14. Economic Component • Since development is basically an economic process, it is necessary to understand that all theories of development have a significant economic dimension, which plays a large role in the discursive process (Peet and Hartwick, 1999: 17) • As these authors challenged, the way that people communicate about economics within development discourse has a profound impact on the language development practitioners use to communicate about the discipline

15. Perspectives on Sustainable Development • There is an increasing body of evidence shows that such an understanding of development is too simplistic and does not take into account the specificity of local geographies, cultures and social structures, nor the complexities of international politics (Esteva, 1987; 1992; DuBois, 1991; Sachs, 1992a; Crush, 1995; Leys, 1996; Nederveen Pieterse, 1998; 2001; and Munck and O’Hearn, 1999; Tucker, 1999) • Adams (1993, 1995), Redcliff (1995) and Vivian (1995) analyze the nature of sustainable development as discourse created by global agencies, among which we see the emergence of conservation discourse • As recently reported by World Bank and other researches have showed that in terms of economic development, resource degradation has become the world concern; especially tropical forest and some countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe and North America

16. Contesting and Empirical Reviews on Development and Conservation • Mark Hobart (1993) said that development is effectively a synonym for more or less planned social and economic change • Campbell’s case in Cost Rica (2002) analyzes how the state creates conservation discourse for its own interests while local people’s basic rights to use resources are ignored. • In Anan’s case (1998), he analyzes the politics of conservation in the northern Thai highland, which shows us the process of how the state creates the discourse of conservation for its own economic, political and ecological interests

17. Practice in Development • As having debated by scholars above, whenever we look at the discourse of sustainable development and conservation the main actors in the process are seen to be power relation, language and knowledge • However, in reality and particularly the practices of people’s daily life, we will experience the changing of power relation • Therefore throughout practice of development, we will see different interpretations of development and conservation

18. Practice Theory • Anthony Giddents (Ritzer, 1988) and Pierre Bourdieu (1977) emphasize on the importance of interaction analysis in social reality as a paradigm to go beyond agency and structure • Giddens focuses on the role of practice in providing space for interactions between agency and structural institutions, and as local response to change outside social system • Bourdieu (1977) explains the relations between power agency, and structure in the context of development practice

19. Access in Local Practices • Access analysis can help us understand why some people or institutions benefit from resources, whether or not they have rights to them • If the study property is concerned with understanding claims, particularly the claims that MacPherson (1978) defines as rights, then the study of access is concerned with understanding of the multiplicity of ways people derive benefits from resources • Access is about all possible means by which a person is able to benefit from things. Property generally evokes some kind of socially acknowledged and supported claims or rights – whether that acknowledgement is by law, custom, or convention

20. Analyzed by MacPherson (1978), Ostrom (1996), Hann (1998) and Carrier (1998), property is seen as social relations instead of physical thing-relations from different levels • However, a key distinction between access and property lies in the difference between ‘ability’ and ‘right’ (Ribot and Pluso, 2003: 153-181) • Leach, Mearns, and Scoones (1997), Agrawal (1999) and Li (2002) criticize that we should not treat community as homogenous • As an alternative community has multiple actors with multiple interests, who interrelate with each other, and there are institutional arrangements that structure their interactions (Agrawal, 1999: 636)

21. The cases from Peluso (1996) and Rocheleau (1997) focus on the conflict among people from different levels over single trees through different access to the resource. • From gender space in Rocheleau’s case, through their daily livelihood practices and negotiation with men and sometimes by using customary and getting support from the old elites, women find their in-between space in tree management, as a result they get access to resources in common controlled by men, even resources in their husbands’ individual plots, and can use fuel wood, fruit, medicinal plants, wild foods, and fodder from men’s tree (Rocheleau, 1997

22. Conceptual Framework • In the conceptual framework, we would see the link of the three theories which local people see the development from outsiders and their own perspective on discourse of conservation in development context.

23. Thank you for your attentions! Welcome advice, suggestion or comments