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Ecosystem-Based Adaptation in Cambodia 2013-2019 - Factsheet

Pays
Cambodge
Sources
UNEP
Date de publication
Origine
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INTRODUCTION

• Cambodia is a country of 16 million people in Southeast Asia. The most prominent geographical feature is the Mekong River that extends across the country from north-tosouth. Approximately 80% of people live along the river in the low-lying central plains, where agriculture is highly dependent on rainfall.

• The project is building climate adaptation near 5 community protected forests across the country. These areas are extremely vulnerable to climate change due to increasingly erratic rainfall, where dry seasons are getting drier and wet seasons are wetter, causing devastating floods and droughts.

• The main approaches of the project are to reforest natural land to regulate soil waterflow; create patrols to halt illegal logging; establish ‘home-gardens’ with irrigation to diversify sources of food and income; and develop early warning climate systems to inform farmers’ planting decisions.

CLIMATE IMPACTS

• Climate change is producing erratic rainfall in Cambodia, the effects of which are increased erosion on people’s farms, crop failures from droughts, and damaged infrastructure that hobbles rural markets.

• Only 19.5% of cultivated land in Cambodia benefits from irrigation, so the agricultural sector is dependent on rainfall.

• To counter the falls in agricultural yields, communities rely on illegal logging in protected forests to supplement food and income, whether it be collecting fuelwood or charcoal.
These decimated forests once provided both climate and soil water regulation in the agriculturally vital Mekong River Basin.

• As the tree-cover has shrunk, people living on the mountains watched the once-abundant rain clouds disappear. With more than 80% of the population relying on agriculture for their livelihood, the risks are high.