Participating in REDD+ Measurement, Reporting, and Verification (PMRV): Opportunities for Local People?

Manuel Boissière, Guillaume Beaudoin, Carola Hofstee  and Serge Rafanoharana 

Assessing forest changes is the baseline requirement for successful forest management. Measurement, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) are three essential components for achieving such assessments. Community participation in resource monitoring and management is increasingly seen as a scientifically efficient, cost-effective, and equitable way to employ such practices, particularly in the context of REDD+. We developed a multidisciplinary approach to study the feasibility of Participatory MRV (PMRV) across three sites along a forest degradation gradient in Indonesia. We looked at both the local and national level needs of MRV. Our approach combines: (1) social research focusing on the enabling conditions for local participation in MRV; (2) governance analyses of existing MRV systems in forestry and health; and (3) remote sensing work comparing overlaps and gaps between satellite imagery and local assessments of forest changes. We considered in our approach the possible multiple benefits of PMRV (carbon mitigation, biodiversity conservation, livelihood security). Our study helped to identify the multiple stakeholders (communities, NGOs and governments) and what the levels of governance should be to make PMRV design and implementation feasible and sustainable. 

Download full paper: http://www.mdpi.com/1999-4907/5/8/1855/htm

The Iron Kuay of Cambodia: Tracing the role of peripheral populations in Angkorian to Colonial Cambodia via a 1200 year old industrial landscape

Thomas Oliver Pryce^a, , 

Mitch Hendrickson^b, 

Kaseka Phon^c, 

Sovichetra Chan^d, 

Michael F. Charlton^e,

Stéphanie Leroy^f, 

Philippe Dillmann^f, 

Quan Hua^g

The Industries of Angkor Project (INDAP) is the first scientific study combining investigation of the chronology, supply network and technology of raw and finished iron within Angkorian (9^th to 15^th c. AD), Middle Period (15^th to 19^th c. AD) and Colonial (1863-1953) Cambodia. This paper is concerned with the production technology employed at five iron smelting sites in the northern province of Preah Vihear, three loci within the enclosure walls of the Angkorian Preah Khan complex and two, c. 30 km east, near Phnom Dek or ‘Iron Mountain’. The Phnom Dek area is an historic homeland of the ethnic minority Kuay people, who continued to smelt iron from local mineral sources into the 1940s. With the aim of testing a previously proposed ‘Angkorian Kuay’ hypothesis, that Kuay ancestors were responsible for Angkorian period iron smelting at Preah Khan of Kompong Svay (Preah Khan), the objective of this preliminary study was to establish whether any technological continuity could be detected across a 1200 year old industrial landscape, and thus if any socio-culturally homologous relations could be proposed for the iron makers respectively responsible. Our preliminary results suggest that the iron smelting remains at Preah Khan date from Angkor’s terminal phase and into the subsequent Middle Period, whereas as the two studied production sites near Phnom Dek range from the 9^th-11^th c. AD and to the 19^th/20^th c. AD. Preah Khan and Phnom Dek production systems appear to have used different iron ore sources but, in the absence of well-preserved furnace remains, statistical analysis of slag chemistry indicates a technological conservatism spanning more than a millennium. At this stage the ‘Angkorian Kuay’ model can be neither rejected nor sustained but the complexity of Preah Vihear province’s settlement and industrial history is becoming increasingly apparent and will only become clearer with further excavation and study of chronologically and geographically intermediate sites.
Keywords

• Southeast Asia; 
• Cambodia; 
• Angkor; 
• Archaeometallurgy; 
• iron smelting; 
• Kuay

Corresponding author.

Source: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440314001447

Effectiveness of Community Forestry in Prey Long Forest, Cambodia

FRANCES H. LAMBRICK, NICK D. BROWN, ANNA LAWRENCE, AND DANIEL P. BEBBER

 Conservation Biology

Cambodia has 57% forest cover, the second highest in the Greater Mekong region, and a high deforestation rate (1.2%/year, 2005–2010). Community forestry (CF) has been proposed as a way to reduce deforestation and support livelihoods through local management of forests. CF is expanding rapidly in Cambodia. The National Forests Program aims to designate one million hectares of forest to CF by 2030. However, the effectiveness of CF in conservation is not clear due to a global lack of controlled comparisons, multiple meanings of CF, and the context-specific nature of CF implementation. We assessed the effectiveness of CF by comparing 9 CF sites with paired controls in state production forest in the area of Prey Long forest, Cambodia. We assessed forest condition in 18–20 randomly placed variable-radius plots and fixed-area regeneration plots. We surveyed 10% of households in each of the 9 CF villages to determine the proportion that used forest products, as a measure of household dependence on the forest. CF sites had fewer signs of anthropogenic damage (cut stems, stumps, and burned trees), higher aboveground biomass, more regenerating stems, and reduced canopy openness than control areas. Abundance of economically valuable species, however, was higher in control sites. We used survey results and geographic parameters to model factors affecting CF outcomes. Interaction between management type, CF or control, and forest dependence indicated that CF was more effective in cases where the community relied on forest products for subsistence use and income.

 Source: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cobi.12217/abstract