Negative Impact of Forest Land Use Change on Household Income in Kratie, Cambodia

Abstract

Land use pattern in the upland area of Kratie Province consists of forest, grazing, shrub and farming land. Due to economic development and demographic pressure, the use, access and control of the forest land have changed significantly. The main objectives are (1) to analyze the impact of the change in land-use on use and extraction of non-timber forest products, (2) to analyze the impact of the change in land-use on livelihood of each type. Structured questionnaires were used on 75 respondents stratified into four sub-groups: resin tapper, former tapper, never tapped and immigrant. Three kinds of forest changes were noticed in the study area. Firstly, forest land was converted to plantation by economic land concession. Secondly, forest was converted to Chamkar and rice growing by farmers. Finally, forest and resin trees of households were destroyed by illegal logging. Commune statistics (2008) showed that 41% of total area was under economic land concession. Furthermore, the average area of Chamkar has been enlarged from 0.44 to 1.30 hectare per households per period of time. The study also shows a problem with resin trees which decreased from more than 160 to only 20 trees per household. Furthermore, the number of resin of tapper was decreased from more than 360 to only 130 trees per household. The income of former tapper from collecting non-timber forest products decreased from approximately 35% (1000 USD/year) to 0.64% (20 USD/year). The result shows significant change on the income of resin tapper from 42.9% (1200 USD/year) to 34.9% (813 USD/year) even though the price of resin increased, which doubled since 2004-2009. In conclusion, changing in forest land-use strongly affected household livelihoods.