Food System Resilience and Sustainability in Cambodia

Land Cover Change

Outside of the densely populated plains the land is mostly forested, and a large percentage of that land has protected status. Indigenous communities reside in these areas but do not have clear land tenure rights. Land tenure remains a controversial issue. Many property deeds were destroyed in the 1970s civil war, and it is estimated that only one-third of the agricultural population has proper title. Recent land concessions to large-scale private agro-industrial entities have increased feelings of land tenure insecurity, potentially affecting rural settlement patterns (Kizlovkis 2014).

In recent years the extent of forest and other wooded land has fallen rapidly due in part both to deforestation and the conversion to agro-industrial crop plantations such as rubber, oil palm, cassava and jatropha, as well as sugar cane and biofuel crops (Bansok et al., 2011). Figure 1 shows an assessment of areas of forest change and the main reason for the forest cover changes (Broadhead & Izquierdo, 2010).