Cambodia vows to expand & improve community-based ecotourism services

Tour­ism Min­is­ter Thong Khon said there are about 2,000 fish­ing and forest com­munit­ies nation­wide, but only a few are serving the tour­ism sector.

“Some areas are try­ing but are not run­ning prop­er tour­ism ser­vices, while we think there are many more forest and fish­er­ies com­munit­ies that could attract tour­ists,” Mr Khon said, adding that the Tour­ism Min­istry would estab­lish a joint work­ing group with others.

Cam­bod­i­a’s Tour­ism Min­istry, Envir­on­ment Min­istry and the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Forestry and Fish­er­ies will work togeth­er to help com­munit­ies take bet­ter advant­age of eco­tour­ism oppor­tun­it­ies via infra­struc­ture improve­ments and train­ing for loc­al tour guides, accord­ing to Mr Khon.

Envir­on­ment Min­is­ter Say Samal said his min­istry would take an act­ive role to ensure that infra­struc­ture devel­op­ment pro­tects nat­ur­al resources. He added that com­munity-based eco­tour­ism would help elim­in­ate illeg­al log­ging and oth­er crimes.

Mr Khon said about 50 com­munit­ies were provid­ing qual­ity tour­ism ser­vices nation­wide and cited the Tonle Sap lake area as a lead­ing example of com­munity-based ecotourism.

MDG-exceeding poverty reduction set to continue

In oth­er news repor­ted on by Khmer Times, the World Bank this week com­mit­ted some $540 mil­lion from 2018 to 2021 to fin­ance eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment in Cam­bod­ia with a focus on sup­port­ing the government’s Indus­tri­al Devel­op­ment Policy and oth­er socioeco­nom­ic projects.

The World Bank has already inves­ted some $243 mil­lion to Cam­bod­ia in sup­port for 12 projects.

Source: “Where Have All the Poor Gone? Cam­bod­ia Poverty Assess­ment 2013,” World Bank.

Accord­ing to a 2014 World Bank Poverty Assess­ment Report, Cam­bod­ia exceeded the Mil­len­ni­um Devel­op­ment Goal poverty tar­get and was one of the best per­formers in poverty reduc­tion world­wide. The poverty rate more than halved, from about 53% in 2004 to approx­im­ately 20% by 2014.

In its Cam­bod­ia Eco­nom­ic Update released in April this year, the World Bank stated that poverty reduc­tion was expec­ted to con­tin­ue, driv­en mainly by the gar­ment, con­struc­tion and ser­vices sec­tors, togeth­er with increases in remittances.

No spe­cif­ic men­tion of tour­ism, how­ever the report added: “The rur­al non-farm eco­nomy could be a sig­ni­fic­ant con­trib­ut­or to poverty reduc­tion and shared prosper­ity in Cam­bod­ia in years to come.”

The World Bank pro­jects that Cambodia’s eco­nom­ic growth will be around 6.9 per cent this year and next “pushed by resi­li­ent con­struc­tion activ­ity, gar­ment exports, an expan­sion of the agri­cul­ture sec­tor espe­cially in rice pro­duc­tion, and tour­ist arrivals”.

Fea­tured image: Hard at work in the rice pad­dies. By Kev­in Evans/AusAID, CC BY 2.0, via Wiki­me­dia.