Cambodia to Enhance Natural Resource Management

Cambodia to enhance natural resource management

PHNOM PENH. Dec. 6 (Xinhua) — A national conference for better management of the natural resources opened here on Tuesday.

The two-day conference, aimed at ensuring nation’s economic development and reducing poverty, will discuss innovative approaches that link the resource management and poverty reduction.

The conference is organized by the Third Commission on Planning, Investment, Rural Development, Environment and Water Resources of the National Assembly in cooperation with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).

The aims of the conference are to promote awareness of the link between natural resources and poverty reduction, to identify responses needed to protect threatened ecosystem, to improve policy and planning on these issues and to recommend projects that can qualify for debt reduction in return for natural resource protection.

Cambodia is endowed with a great wealth of natural asset, particularly fish, forest and wild life, and has unique ecosystem such as the Tonle Sap, the Cardamom Mountains, the Mekong, the northern and eastern plains.

“These valuable resources to the nation and people require a consistent and continued effort of good governance, preservation, management and wise use to ensure their existence for utilization by many generations to come,” said Ly Thuch, head of the National Assembly’s Commission on Planning, Investment, Rural Development, Environment and Water Resources.

Some experts have raised grave concerns over severe destruction of natural resources in Cambodia and the immediate needs for their effective management, preservation and protection.

Ly Thuch stressed that “close collaboration and strong partnership … between the National Assembly as the legislative body and the Royal Government of Cambodia as the executive body of the state would be an essential national mechanism to ascertain progress of the revived Kingdom of Cambodia.”

Because many poor people depend on such natural resources for their livelihood, the conference will help find ways that integrate better management of these resources with the needs of the poor.

Participants of the conference are from the legislatures, government, military, police and provinces as well as from non- government organizations.