Although widely used in the development area, the stakeholder concept has its origins in
the field of management. Stakeholder management consists of understanding the
actions of stakeholders, and devising strategies to ethically and effectively deal with
them. The paper presents a stakeholder management framework for conservation and
illustrates it with a study of deforestation in Cambodia. The framework comprises three
steps: stakeholder analysis, stakeholder mapping, and development of stakeholder
management strategies. The exercise shows the existence of a strong coalition of
stakeholders whose main goal is to exploit the forest resources of Cambodia without any
regard for sustainability. The efforts of the international community to control
deforestation have focused on a reform of forest concessions. Consequently, several
primary stakeholders have been ignored. These include local communities, the Royal
Cambodian Armed Forces, the Ministry of Environment and Cambodia’s neighbours.
The paper concludes with strategic management guidance for donor intervention.
Unless a comprehensive stakeholder management framework is adopted, the forests of
Cambodia will rapidly succumb to destruction