Resource “co-management” is relatively new in Cambodia. The experiment started in 1996–97, and for fisheries it was scaled up in 2000, when a top-down reform reclaimed 56 percent of fishing concession areas to create “co-management.” In 2011–12, another reform altogether annulled fishing lots. The reforms applied mainly to freshwater fisheries; therefore, significant writing on them exists. Marine fisheries, however, receive less attention.
Life, Fish and Mangroves discusses coastal resource governance, illustrating local efforts in resource management and the successes and challenges Koh Sralao experienced through the use of longitudinal, case-specific, ethnographic research. Melissa Marschke is impressed by local participation and the success, especially in “small issues” of mangrove replanting, waste management, and patrolling. The community also dealt with larger issues, such as gear theft and excess capacity, yet these efforts were less successful. The biggest failure was its inability to stop coastal sand mining in a nearby, protected area.
Given her extensive personal involvement, Marschke vividly portrays this participation and takes a grounded approach to illustrating it. After presenting resource governance conceptually and in Cambodia, she portrays village lives, including the relationship between socio-ecological changes and livelihood trajectories, community dynamics, and local involvement in governance, illustrating its relative success.
She next examines governance “across broader administrative units”—the governability (or lack of it) in Chrouy Pros Bay—an area under multiple communities and state jurisdictions and for multiple exploitation purposes. She explores conflict management, involving large-scale fisheries, and importantly the sand mining operations of powerful tycoons. She showcases the positive and negative aspects of local resource governance policy manipulation and the complexities the community faces when issues involve decisions and actions by politicians and “business entrepreneurs.” Here decentralized management is virtually a failure and informal policy prevails in this “Wild West.” The exploitation caused the village to reach “a breaking point.”
To explain the rather limited local resource governability, she conceptualizes three levels of failures: at the village, in partnership, and in national leadership. Power imbalance and limited policy uptake are bottlenecks to governability, and it needs “serious shifts in worldview” and “acculturation” of good governance practices to see that any resource management policy would be sincerely followed. While she correctly conceptualizes the multi-level failures, a few shortcomings exist in her analysis.
This publication, written in straightforward language, is a rare work in this field of study. Its organization makes it easy to follow. The issue of governance is discussed at the micro (individual and family) through meso (community/communities) to macro (national policy and to some extent politics) levels. It demonstrates rural livelihoods in a resource-dependent, quickly transforming economy, and how livelihood activities, community building, power relations, and policy non-uptake affect governance and vice versa. Through a focus on Koh Sralao, Marschke presents the paradox in “rural development” while discussing resilience in challenging circumstances: conservation efforts with minimal state support and threat from social forces, and improvement in individual and institutional capacities. The study illuminates the systematic, structural, and political-economic issues Cambodia faces. The challenges are not confined solely to Koh Sralao; all constructed communities in Cambodia face similar issues. Numerous communities completely fail in managing their resources or exist merely on paper.Footnote 18
Details in some areas need further discussion. The history of natural resource governance in Cambodia is presented, but its recent history could be discussed in more detail. Documents in foreign languages are limited, but documents in Khmer exist, and key informants can provide information too. Some lots, for example, were exploited during the Democratic Kampuchea as they were before. Fishing krom samaki, established in 1980, were meant to be cooperative and could be predecessors of fishing communities, but they were managed like fishing lots.Footnote 19 Illegal sales of fishing rights and areas by the Khmer Rouge and the government militia were rampant during the 1980s and 1990s; they even provided protection services to krom samaki and concessionaires. These matters are not covered, albeit they provide background stories for subsequent reforms.
Chapter 1 presents external support to decentralization in Cambodia. It is rather short and fails to examine such issues as externally upward accountability and the absence of exit plans, which impact community building. How the involvement of international actors, in this case the International Development Research Center (Canada), contributes to the community's failure or success could be analyzed. Some footnotes and small discussions exist, but this should form a separate section.
Local resource governance is not the right “entry point.” Given our history and culture in Cambodia, governmental involvement is necessary. While Marschke's effort to present voices from government agents is plausible, they are not heard enough throughout. This is especially true for the discussion of coastal sand mining. Admittedly, the voices from state actors and the “entrepreneurs” are missing. This is understandable, given its sensitivity, yet more could be heard from them given the magnitude of the impact.
Unbalanced power relations and limited policy uptake explain the failures, and Marschke consistently demonstrates them. Other things that explain the failures worth discussing in detail in chapter 6 are state incapacity and patronage politics. Policies are mostly initiated by donors and/or politicians, leaving technocrats as implementers. Expediency and chasing funding for “development projects” underlie institutional operation. Long-term institutional capacity building is secondary in importance. Such building is sacrificed in favor of short-lived project or program intervention, and this has negative effects on community institutionalization. Limited institutionalization results from inter-ministerial competition too. While such competition is common anywhere, Cambodian ministries are eager to protect fiefdoms, as this involves entrepreneurial opportunities and agency loyalty.Footnote 20 Together with geographical territorialization, it hampers efficacy and efficiency.
The political explains the failures too. In Cambodia, co-management is arguably done more to increase political popularity and legitimacy rather than for more effective resource management.Footnote 21 While Marschke explains that a power imbalance towards the “entrepreneurs” hinders efforts in local governance, the underlying rationales are not covered. A common understanding is that sand mining of this scale often requires strong tacit support—patron-client politics may exist, but is not explored.Footnote 22 Such politics is deep-seated in Khmer political culture and has unpleasant consequences.
Although Life, Fish and Mangroves lacks some macro details, this is an excellent work in this field and is a sole qualitative, longitudinal study on resource governance in Cambodia. Its case illustrates the harsh reality in resource governance and gives the reader a clear picture of how co-management works, revealing the challenges and resilience in community building. Given its simple language, this book is highly recommended to general readers, as well as students and scholars who have an interest in Cambodia, resource governance, and political ecology.
