CONSERVATION INTERNATIONAL

IN THE GREATER MEKONG REGION

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CONSERVATION INTERNATIONAL IN THE GREATER MEKONG REGION

Working with communities to preserve their greatest assets.

Overview

Conservation International (CI) has been active in the Greater Mekong region – comprising Cambodia, Lao PDR, Vietnam and Thailand – since 2001. From our base in Cambodia’s Phnom Penh, we work across regional borders, developing science, influencing policy and fostering partnerships to protect the region’s outstanding natural capital.

Regional work

The Greater Mekong region is estimated to be home to some 60 million people. Approximately 70% of this population rely directly on natural resources for their subsistence – the land, the rivers and the forests. Yet high GDP rates in the Mekong countries, a push for development, and poor trans-boundary governance are eroding the foundations of these livelihoods. CI’s strategy for mitigating this trend centers on what we call “beads on a string”, or a series of protected areas (PA) conserving the top 10%- 20% of the most important reservoirs of natural capital from the top of the river on the Tibetan Plateau, to the Cardamoms/Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia.

National work

Our field programs are presently focused in Cambodia, where we work with the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC), local communities and a range of partners to maintain the country’s most important forests, and the cornerstone of the country that is the Tonle Sap Lake. Our aim is that by 2017, we will have aided 2.74 million people indirectly and 9,000 people directly by:

mainstreaming the value of ecosystem services in the national economy, making the distribution of services equitable among people as well as generations. We help the RGC implement its Green Growth Roadmap and Environmental Code, by offering data on metrics, building capacity for watershed landscape and PA planning and management, and building understanding of resource economics and payments for ecosystem services (PES); and

conserving 1.35 million ha of terrestrial and freshwater systems and 350 km of rivers for the people that need them.

Tonle Sap Program

The Tonle Sap lake is the seventh largest inland fishery in the world, and indisputably the heart of the country, economically, culturally and nutritionally – the Lake provides an estimated 70% of Cambodia’s protein intake. It is also home to a million people living in ‘floating’ villages. Since 2008, CI has been engaged with six of these villages, helping them to safeguard their natural capital by establishing PAs and reducing illegal fishing and deforestation; and to improve their livelihoods through sharing new skills and improving market linkages. We have seen tremendous success in this project, and are ready to scale up our efforts.

Forest Landscapes Program

CI is heavily invested in the protection of Cambodia’s best remaining forests, in particular the Central Cardamoms. Breathtakingly beautiful, the Central Cardamoms are the primary watershed for one-third of Cambodia, and home to a huge range of plants and animals, many endangered. CI played a central role in the establishment of the 400,000ha Central Cardamoms Protected Forest (CCPF) in 2002, and have maintained a strong presence, working with the RGC and local communities to defend the area from logging and poaching, and making it the best protected forest in the country. Partner communities are compensated for their conservation efforts by alternative livelihood development, and CI’s recently established conservation Trust Fund – Cambodia’s first – will ensure the forests can stand for many more generations. We are replicating our successful CCPF model in Prey Lang, and also have a long standing commitment in the Veun Sai Siem Pang Conservation Area (VSSPCA), where community-based ecotourism is helping preserve another forest of significant conservation value.

CI is committed to the Greater Mekong, and we are in the process of expanding our reach in the region.

CI partners from the Tonle Sap. Photo: Tangkor Dong