Deforestation in Cambodia: a stakeholder management approach

Abstract

SUMMARY 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.