The data, insights, advise and experiences collected during the review all point in the same
direction - Sweden can still make a difference to promote a sustainable management of
natural resources, effective climate change adaptation and a rapid poverty alleviation based on
a green growth perspective.
The current areas of cooperation of Sweden in Cambodia - Human rights, Democracy,
Education and Climate change – all present windows of opportunities for environmental
mainstreaming that can improve transparency, participation and accountability and other
crucial aspects of policy implementation to promote good governance in Cambodia. For
example can safeguarding rights of local communities to have an improved say on land
concessions secure that forests and wetlands that provide significant ecosystem services are
not destroyed, the decentralization reform can be supported to include increased
empowerment and public participation on decision making on climate change adaptation in
provinces and villages, UNICEF who Sweden cooperates with on basic education has
developed practices on scaling up and mainstreaming climate change adaptation and disaster
risk reduction into the education sector and discussing how an extended collaboration on
environment and climate change mainstreaming jointly UNICEF-Sweden could be extended
into the education sector is also an opportunity that shouldn’t be missed.
In addition the policy brief suggests that Sweden open up a new area of cooperation in the
next strategy – Environment and Climate Change according to entry values presented by the
Swedish Government for the recently started process to develop a Result Proposal for
Cambodia.
Because of the large deficiencies in both government capacity and funding for sustainable
management of natural resources in the country there seems to be very little risk of “overcrowding”
in this sector if Sweden should remain in and expand its engagement, an assertion
supported by stakeholders interviewed during the review. Key initiatives in this area could
include:
- long-term funding to the Cambodian Climate Change Alliance (CCCA) and taking up
coordination duties
- supporting the gender mainstreaming component in the project on Local Governments and
Climate Change (LGCC) to ensure that women’s concerns on climate change and priorities
for adaptation actions are
- backing initiatives by forest communities directed at delivering carbon credits to the
Voluntary Carbon Markets
- funding NGOs that help communities set up Community Forestry projects
- support to the Forestry Administration in establishing and managing Conservation areas
- capacity building at the Ministry of Environment
- joint programming with other donors on sustaining the ecosystem services of the Mekong
and Tonle Sap
- helping the Ministry of Mining and Energy to enhance rural electrification
- assisting in the implementation of the Green Growth strateg