Email: to_sophea@yahoo.com

Affiliation: University of Cologne, Germany

Nationality: Cambodian

The global domination of reducing carbon emissions through the reduction of deforestation and its impact on indigenous people in Cambodia

Abstract

The global domination of reducing carbon emission through the reduction of deforestation has been to a greater extent motivated land managers, particularly in developing countries like Cambodia, to keep certain trees standing (defined as forest) through efforts of conservation. This new order makes the invasion on the indigenous people's way of life an ongoing control/repression and always in line with a pre-defined better means of egregious income generation, not for the people but rather the state. Swedish agriculture is seen as backward with little productivity and a threat to the changing ecological environment. The land manager, with the help from the good intention holders (NGOs and UN agencies), then evacuate 'settled villages of indigenous people perceived to be a threat' out of the so called 'core zone' just to give way to other suspicious state activities. i.e mine exploration and logging of valuable wood.

This is all happening amidst the chaos of the roles of the state agency responsible for environmental management in Cambodia. The chaos here does not refer to the fact that the state institution does not have the capacity to address the matter in question rather that it has 'other way' empowered by the shadow steered by the political party in the ruling other than the novel rhetoric of 'tax payers rights' used and promoted by the west. The state institution is then a tool for the political party to reach its control and a sort of development of its own agenda while weakened by giving in to the 'order' of promotion, disciplinary acts, bureaucratic means as control, and financial policies. This is not to say, however, that those who are within the state institutions are disqualified as professionals given some's education background and achievement, rather this would be left to be rotten if the given ways are not followed. It is then hard to imagine the level of consideration of such a state on the indigenous people's contribution to its agenda.

The possibility of control is inarguably made possible by repression (using all sorts of means, soft, hard, hybrid) on the dissidents, particularly the activists, which is stronger in intensity and impunity. Imprisonment, cooptation, and the former and then the latter are more and more obvious in the new government born out of the transferring of position from father to sons and network of family. Compliance (rather than allegiance) is a norm overshadowing the performance of the administration.

Using ethnography to investigate the ministry of environment of Cambodia and then following the observed dynamics all the way down to Virakchhay national park, the paper intends to question the current understanding and debate about Cambodia's patronage and allegiance, global action on climate change through intensified conservation and the relationship with indigenous people.

Bio

I am Sophea KONG, a female PhD candidate at the University of Cologne, Germany in the discipline of cultural and social anthropology. The decision to follow this program (PhD and discipline) has been shaped by various encounters. First and foremost, my experiences as an NGO worker with various projects ranging from trafficking to gender-based violence have dragged me to seek for something bigger than development projects who blamed mostly the victims for not being able to hold the state accountable under the very rubrics of capacity building and lobbying and advocacy. The opportunity turned up when I was awarded an Australian scholarship and finished a master's degree in social science (international development/development studies) grounding me for the then academic research which I landed in, embracing ethnography as a main means of investigation. This was the time in which I was inspired by the work of an anthropologist covering the political and cultural spectrum of not just the local but the global context of contemporary Cambodia.

My current enquiry allows me to question the way in which Cambodia (as well as others and the globe) ecological crisis is contested with the political economy and the authoritarian control of the state. Following ethnographic investigation method, I argue that the so-called Cambodian civil servants in the environment sectors are at peace with the ruling party under various terms including formality, supplementing the needed income with environmental development projects funded by climate funding and running private businesses. The control over ecological catastrophe is thereby repression over independent media and appeasing dissidents.