This special issue analyzes specific changes in the lives of rural populations and communities in Pursat Province, southwest Cambodia, during about 30 years since the 1990s by bringing together multi-scale interdisciplinary case studies. The current Cambodian government, which came into existence as a democratic institution in 1993 with the support of the United Nations, has given priority to market principles. Thanks to integrating into the global economy, the country has enjoyed rapid and steady economic development for over three decades. However, the government has not distributed the fruits of action equally among the population. At the same time, the deterioration of natural resources in the country has accelerated.

Based on fieldwork conducted from 2011 to 2020, the five case studies in this special issue explore the transformation of living conditions and communities in Pursat Province from an interdisciplinary perspective. The first two case studies, a comparative analysis of rural livelihoods in lowland and upland areas and a comprehensive study of agricultural development, present a complete understanding of the changes. The third case study examines the impact of modern rice-growing activities recently introduced into the irrigated lowland villages. The fourth and fifth case studies reveal the transformation of the environment and local societies in the upland mountainous areas. Collectively, the case studies illustrate the three driving factors in the recent changes among rural communities in the province: the region’s rich natural resources, the expansion of connectivity, and the penetration of the market economy.

These three factors in rural Cambodian society’s transformation are not new. However, by reading the five articles one can gain a deeper understanding of how these factors operate in Cambodia’s rural communities in the twenty-first century and the ways in which they have changed people’s lives. The articles serve to expand the knowledge of readers, who could include experts as well as the general public, seeking to understand the transformation of the world in terms of local reality. At the same time, this special issue demonstrates the value of interdisciplinary collaborative research by bringing together researchers of the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences to study an area and its people’s lives.

This paper studies rural transformations in Cambodia under the developmental regime that started in the beginning of the twenty-first century. Many scholars have depicted Cambodian agrarian society by contrasting lowland and upland in terms of people and livelihoods. However, with the rapid and diverse changes since the introduction of the market economy more than 20 years ago, many lowland populations have moved upland in order to explore new livelihoods based on cash crop cultivation. The remaining lowland people who traditionally engaged in rice growing and fishery are also seeking new challenges under the unique economic circumstances that include economic migrants to urban areas and abroad. In order to update the conventional understanding of Cambodian rural society and people’s lives under these changes, this paper examines information and data collected through household surveys conducted in 2016–18 at sample villages in five agroecological zones of Pursat Province: inundated lowland, unirrigated lowland, irrigated lowland, lowland-upland complex, and upland. By comparing the livelihood activities in different zones, this paper explores the uniqueness of rural transformations in each location and people’s struggle for a better life. The analysis also points out that the following factors are crucial to understanding rural transformations in the area: the development of connectivity; the impact of newly introduced modern technologies, including microfinance; and the deterioration of natural resources, such as fish and forestland.

Using primary and secondary data, this study investigates how the agriculture of Pursat Province has developed in recent decades. As is the case with Cambodian agriculture as a whole, the agricultural development of Pursat Province is characterized by a rapid expansion in the production of both rice and upland crops such as cassava and maize for export. The increase in production was stimulated by the rise of international prices of those crops, and made possible primarily by the utilization of unused natural resources, including water from the Pursat River for rice and a large area of uncultivated land for the upland crops. These resources were put to use with the construction of irrigation facilities for the former and paved roads for the latter, almost entirely funded by foreign assistance. Farmers and distributors of crops and agricultural inputs could expand their operations by obtaining loans from private financial institutions. Such institutions have expanded their business in rural Cambodia since the 2000s with funds from foreign institutions. In comparison with the cases of rice production in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta and cassava production in northeastern Thailand, the agricultural development of Pursat Province is distinguished by its heavy reliance on foreign assistance for infrastructure construction and foreign-funded private financial institutions for agricultural credit.

Rice production in Cambodia has achieved rapid growth over the last 20 years. One of the major reasons for this is the development of irrigation facilities. This study conducted field investigations on rice production in the Krouch Saeuch irrigation area from the rainy season of 2013 to the dry season of 2015, and evaluated the effect of irrigation development on rice cultivation management and productivity in order to discuss future perspectives in rice production in Cambodia. Compared with the adjacent nonirrigated area, the irrigated area showed conspicuous expansion of aromatic cultivars in the rainy season and early-maturing high-yielding cultivars in the dry season within a few years after irrigation was provided. The expansion was focused on rice selling, suggesting that the focus of cultivation changed from self-sufficiency to commercial. The main planting method also changed from transplanting to broadcasting. Earlier planting became more common, and the use of fertilizers and agrochemicals was more prevalent in the irrigated than in the nonirrigated area. However, these changes did not necessarily lead to increased productivity. Instances of improper management, such as ineffective application of fertilizer, were sometimes observed.

One of the major production constraints is lodging due to excessive growth of aromatic rice. The development of cultivation management is primarily recommended to eliminate this constraint. The development of irrigation canals changes the economic activities of farmers in addition to cultivation management. Accordingly, comprehensive assessment is necessary when new irrigation canals are planned.

The expansion of agricultural land through the clearing of forests by pioneer peasants, which was observed in northeastern Thailand in the twentieth century, has been occurring in mountainous areas of Cambodia in the twenty-first century. In this study, we clarified strategies and behaviors of immigrant peasant farmers in the Veal Veng Plateau, which was cleared of residents by the forced relocation during the Pol Pot period. Migrants from all over Cambodia rushed to this uninhabited region after the civil war. On-site interview surveys and analysis of satellite remote sensing data indicated that peasant farmers who rushed into the study area from around 2000 preferred to clear evergreen forests, which were suitable for cash crop cultivation. Land that was unsuitable for cash crops but suitable for rice paddy was left uncleared until around 2015. This was a drastic change from the self-sufficient agriculture carried out by the Khmer Rouge soldiers who had earlier occupied the study area. Such rapid and uniform changes in livelihoods and survival strategies have never appeared in other parts of continental Southeast Asia. It can be concluded that society in the study area was created by pioneer farmers who came with the global economy.

This article explores land-use transformation in a highland community in the Cardamom Mountains in western Cambodia, focusing not only on agricultural land used for subsistence but also on land used for producing a non-timber forest product, cardamom, as a commercial product. Taking account of the historical context in a cardamom production site, the article examines how people who lived in the highlands from the prewar period and migrants from the lowlands during the postwar period acquired agricultural land.

Forestland in the early 1990s was “forbidden forest”; since the prewar period there was a taboo against clearing forests that were used for cardamom production. Both highland people and migrants from the lowlands were aware of the taboo, and some of them avoided clearing the cardamom forest, where the land was most fertile. However, from the late 1990s onward cardamom forest was cleared. Internal factors to this were land rights, including rights to fallow, claimed within the community by early and late returnees and newcomers. External factors such as the construction of logging roads and a hydroelectric dam, the expansion of agricultural cash crops, and the privatization of land by outsiders became additional drivers that pushed people to clear the cardamom forest.

The trajectory of land-use transformation shows that forests were initially used for producing cardamom as a commercial product in the prewar period, later served a subsistence purpose for rice production, and then served a commercial purpose for cash crop production in the postwar period. The changes indicate that the land-use purpose did not simply change from subsistence to commercial in the highland community in the Cardamom Mountains, unlike in other highland communities in Cambodia.