Cambodia is consistently ranked among the top ten countries most vulnerable to climate change, and among the three most vulnerable in Asia.

Women are among the poorest in rural Cambodia, and most likely to bear the heaviest burdens associated with climate change impacts. If either flooding or drought occurs, women are even more vulnerable as their roles are primary caregivers and fully in charge of providing food and fuel, to name a few. But women´s knowledge and expertise also contribute greatly to building resilience to climate impacts and to cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Their traditional skills and knowledge relating to natural resource management in areas such as innovation, waste and energy are effective tools in climate action strategies.

Given wide-range functions of women in the sector of agriculture, livestock, fisheries, energy, forestry, water and land management, closing the gender gap in natural resource management and climate resilient is crucial for achieving food security and strengthening resilience of rural communities to climate change. Considering women as powerful agents of change, FAO has been collaborating with the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC), particularly the Ministry of Women Affair (MOWA), the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF), and the Ministry of Environment (MOE) to implement the “Life and Nature” project to pilot climate resilient alternative livelihood options targeting women. 

With financial support from the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the “Life and Nature” Project has been implemented since 2015 in Cambodia to address the root causes of climate change’s impact upon food security and livelihoods of rural communities, by increasing their adaptive capacity and transferring adaptation technology through i. Participatory integrated micro-watershed management reducing climate impacts on natural resources; ii. Promotion of climate resilient agricultural practices demonstrated through Farmer Field Schools (FFS); and iii. Piloting of climate resilient alternative livelihood options targeting women. The project is implemented in the four provinces in Siem Reap, Preah Vihear, Kampong Thom, and Ratanakiri.

Giving alternatives

The project’s gender component is centered on creating alternative livelihood options to address a lack of suitable climate resilient livelihoods for women farmers.

The strategy is to empower women by improving female farmer’s decision-making and enhancing the equal participation, representation, and rights of women and men. Among others, the project required that at least 40% of the Watershed Management Committee (WSMC) members, must be women. The WSMC is a committee that was established to lead and facilitate the implementation of the micro-watershed management approach, a promising method for natural resource restoration and to enhance the functionality of ecosystem services, a key dimension of the project.

The project conducted gender mainstreaming and supported the setting up of women’s collective structures, “Women Producer Groups (WPG)”, to develop alternative livelihood options. As of now, 19 Women’s Producer Groups across the four targeted areas were established.

The WPG received capacity trainings on saving loans and group management, as well as farming and business skills, linking their production to the market. Currently, the WPG have a total revolving fund of US$ 49,326 to provide loans to their members with the aim of improving their livelihoods.

As stated by two members of WPG from Siem Reap province, Ms Vatt Veasna and Ms Doung Kunthea, the collective activities from the project helped them to diversify their incomes and realize agricultural practices that diversify their livelihoods and build food security, such as growing cover crops and selecting proper seedlings. “We are very grateful to the project for organizing women cohorts and supporting us with new farming skills and better water supply. The saving groups are very helpful to implement our ideas and improve the well-being of our families,” said Ms Veasna.

Besides the saving activities, the WPG meet up to establish collaborative business plans, including sustainable farm planning. The business plans prioritize local investment opportunities for women collective sale, meaning that members must agree together in advance on the targeted total production based on a market assessment indicating current economic and agricultural trends.

As stated by FAO-LNP’s Gender Specialist, Ms Bettina Gatt, “very often, buyers are not interested in going down to rural villages to collect little farming products from these families, as they are considered unstable suppliers. Therefore, useful set of farming skills, a proper plan, and the collective sale, would be an effective approach to support the livelihoods of these rural communities.”

Ms Khly Ny, is a WPG member from Pok Pok Commune, Kampong Thom province. She borrowed 400 000 Riel (USD100) from her group in 2017 to buy a water pump for her lemon farm. With her own savings and support from the project, she expanded her lemon production and set up drip irrigation in her lemon field. She said that her women cohort aimed to produce around 200Kg of lemon in 2020, and “members will contribute to this target as agreed in our business plan, and I personally plan to produce up to 100 kg.”

A dynamic lesson learnt platform

Ms Khly Ny and the two members of WPGs from Siem Reap province recently met with more than 50 participants at a Provincial Workshop on Lessons Learnt for Climate Resilient Alternative Livelihood Options targeting Women, which was organized by MOWA, together with FAO LNP-Team on 16 December 2019 in Siem Reap province.

WPG members and women from the WSMC from the three target provinces of Siem Reap, Kampong Thom and Preah Vihear were invited to share their good practices, including detailing protocols, responsibilities, and long-term financing needs and sources.

The event enabled women farmers to learn from each other and inspiring stories on how to adapt to climate change and ensure food security shared by invited women entrepreneurs from other projects.

H.E. Sivan Botum, Secretary of State of the MOWA expressed great interest in the project’s methods and appreciated the close cooperation between the project team and the MOWA, as well as other partners.

She emphasized in her opening remark that, “the participation of women in decision-making processes within natural resource management and creating climate-resilient livelihood options targeting women is crucial to ensure sustainable development and face climate change impacts.”

At this workshop, also the results and achievements from the gender analysis undertaken for Farmer Field Schools planning, implementation and monitoring frameworks were presented. In 2019, the FFS as field-based learning approach, were designed responding to gender specific issues related to nutrition and food security, including possible business opportunities for rural women. In that sense, female FFS members were introduced to climate smart agriculture (CSA) concepts that seek to improve their agricultural practices. Around 75% of the FFS participants were women in 2019 –far exceeding the set objective of 50%- and 8 of the 16 learning plots in the four provinces identified to pilot the FFS are owned by women-headed households, who were able to improve their technical skills as pathways for livelihood diversification and climate change resilience of their communities.

The participants showed a high interest in further improving their skills to enhance their watershed management and farming techniques, including compost fertilizers, botanical pesticides, grafting techniques and irrigation systems for lemon production and cover crops, as they think these are good technologies to both minimize women’s workload and maintain healthy soils.