Socio-economic Analysis of the Tonle Sap Region, Cambodia: Building Links and Capacity for Targeted Poverty Alleviation

Cambodia is recovering from three decades of violence. The Tonle Sap region is the poorest part of this deprived country. Its economy now suffers from substantial informal and destructive activities. A socio-economic analysis of the region--a part of the Mekong River Commission's Water Utilization Programme, which serves the lower Mekong's Basin Development Plan (BDP)--is documented. Besides the multifaceted collection and analysis of data and information from participatory fieldwork, various databases, mathematical models, expert interviews and so forth, a crucial part of the work is to build up and reinforce links between the Mekong River Commission, ministries, provincial authorities, non-governmental organizations, universities and ultimately local communities, and thereby root the BDP into the emerging civil society. Otherwise, the BDP is at high risk of sharing the fate of its predecessors on the Mekong as well as in many other parts of the world. This fate has too often been a failure of the plan, however integrated it has attempted to be.