Yes, American Khmer – they ARE poor.

How can one bring positive change to Cambodia, while ordinary Americans are drowning in debts? Just open your eyes and see the real issues.

I have been back to Cambodia on many occasions and visited many provinces. It was liberating to see all of my Khmer fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and cousins as the landlords. I am concern about the land grabbing and the many government land concessions issued to private businesses. Cambodia does not need this kind of development. I am grateful for the article and many individuals who show the same concern.

When organizations, be it the government or the private sector decide to develop a few thousand hectares, what really do they mean. The general belief is that private sectors make decisions motivated by profit, (unless they are a charity) and government on the other hand decides for the benefit of the people. It is not for me to discuss if these actually happens or if it’s not true.

But my humble point of view is this, how do you define development? Has it got to be mutually exclusive between material benefit to the company and social wellbeing to the community? How if in the process of developing vast pieces of land that benefit directly to the immediate stake holders, the community in which the activities take place. The villagers will naturally question the whole process of strangers coming to their backyard and making money and they don’t see a dime. They have been working the land for generations and all of a sudden now it belongs to someone else. Should the villages see the benefits, they are less likely to be against a project. Many organizations have only recently implemented or carry out CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) work in areas where they plan to develop land on large scales. Without doubt a company opening up thousands of hectares to plant eucalyptus or any other commercial crop will have a major implication in that area. How can this be wrong. This must be done for people to advance materially. But it must be done correctly. Correctly meaning socially responsible. Socially responsibly means that at the end of the day, more people will benefit in terms of better health care and better schools. Those who plant paddy will have better tools. Clean water will be a right rather than a privilege.

Then again CSR must be a genuine issue, not just window dressing and thinking that outsiders will look at an organization positively and buy more of its products. It is not simply a ‘feel good factor’. It should NOT be done to obtain tax benefits. It must be done so that there will be fewer childbirth deaths and its like. It is also not something an organization ‘contributes’ to the community but rather it should be something that is embedded in the mission of the company and discussed in the board room just like budgets and cost variances and P&L and balance sheet are studied.

In the present day the role of private companies must be strongly pushed for. The revenues of large companies quite often are bigger than the GDP of a few African countries combined. So why cant they seriously place the benefit of communities as the main objective of entering into a country and developing it and in the process make money? It is only a fraction of the cost usually. If companies can’t afford that, it should be considered as not a viable business venture.

What should be done is to encourage them to systematically place their priorities right and the government including local government should assist in its implementation. The local community and its benefits such as schools and hospitals come first and must be costed when making an investment appraisal as to develop a piece of land or not. Yes, some of it may be difficult at this stage but that should be the direction that needs to be taken if you want sustainable development. As to the many injustice such as land grabbing and workers killing farm animals and corruption etc, well, it is something that is a disease not just in the third world countries but also (albeit to a lesser extent) of developed nations too. The perpetrators must be brought to justice. We must be clear however that that needs a solution in the courts and must not cloud the decision of long term sustainable development of land area.

I have been to Cambodia to places such as Battambang and Kampong Chnnang. So, I do know to an extent (superficial level you could say) of the kind of lives these gentle folk live in. Just like may of the citizens of this planet, I too am concerned I am always concerned of the matters that you have clearly pointed out and am always grateful to the many NGOs and individuals who show concern on these issues, but at the same time I believe we need to place pressure on implementing positive changes.

Nowhere have I written that “all investment should stop”. Neither do I believe that urban “migration is a myth”, nor that “sustainably driven investment should not be encouraged.”

The article above highlights the problems from poorly planned and executed projects (in the present, actually, not in the past) in the hope that some lessons might be learned. The point is that these projects are not “sustainably driven” and are actually making poor people poorer.

Urban migration is a myth, because the rural areas are rich in resources that are easily able to support their population. After all, these people arent poor.

Industry creation through sustainably driven investment should not be encouraged. All investments will bring negative effects that outweigh the positives and should be discouraged.

Instead of learning from poorly planned and executed projects in the past, we should just quote them as reasons to never try again.

And while plantations can provide work for local people in theory, what often happens is that workers are brought in from other areas of the country, or in some cases from different countries. The work is often dangerous, badly paid and in many cases only part time. There’s more information about work conditions on plantation operations in a 2006 report that WRM commissioned: “The death of the Forest: A Report on Wuzhishan’s and Green Rich’s Plantation activities in Cambodia“.

Land concessions in Cambodia are handed out not according to economic principles or based on considerations of development for rural communities. They are handed out by one of the most corrupt governments on the planet, largely to business cronies of the prime minister. Global Witness has documented the problem in detail for more than a decade.

Here’s another example of the impacts of plantations on rural communities: A report commissioned by the French Development Agency: “Assessment of the Environmental and Social Impacts created by the VLRC Industrial Rubber Plantation and Proposed Environmental and Social Plans” (pdf file 2.2 MB, May 2007). The report goes into detail about the impacts of a 10,000 hectare rubber concession in Bachieng district in Laos run by the Vietnam General Rubber Corporation (GERUCO). “33 villages, totaling a population of 12,644 people, have been directly impacted by the project, having lost all or part of their agricultural lands.” AFD decided not to fund this plantation based on the findings of this report, although they have financed the same company’s plantations in Vietnam.

Of course they would rather have control over the project rather than work for it. Who wouldnt? But REALISTICALLY speaking, an NGO isnt going to invest $40 million into a project that turns agriculture into small decentralised businesses. But a private company IS willing to invest $40 million into an agro-industrial development.

There are plenty of examples (Banteay Meanchey & Oddar Meanchey in Cambodia for example) of land that has been cleared in the last 20 years and sits unused. I admit that in the past these lands were raped by govt and private interests for the wood that was upon them. But the reality now is that they sit unused. Unfarmed, untouched. Ive seen nealry 40,000ha in these 2 provinces alone like this. Whats wrong with putting this land to use?
I cant accept that people would reject 2500 jobs because they ‘dont want to be workers’. This doesnt just provide incomes to families who had none before, but the economic flow on effect from the employment of these 2500 people will also be visibly seen in their communities, not to say the other services and goods that will be demanded by the workforce and the project – locals can ‘be their own boss’ providing those services and goods.