Environment and poverty nexus is still a polemical issue. Some schools of thought claim
that it is poverty that has the major effect on the environment, while another perspective suggests
that the environment has more impact on the poor than vice-versa because the poor have no
power to exploit the environment. In the context of Cambodia, there is a general consensus that
the poor, particularly those living in rural areas, are heavily dependent on the environment i.e.
common property resources. If the environment is degraded, the livelihoods of those people
will definitely be severely affected.
This paper aims to address the impact of environmental degradation on poverty in
Cambodia. We use the Cambodia Socio-economic Survey in 2007 (CSES 2007) and other
available secondary data to examine the impact of environmental income (forestry and hunting)
and that of environmental variables such as flood, drought, and land erosion on poverty. Following
Cavendish (1999), we use a simple descriptive method to assess the former hypothesis. To take
other factors into account, probit regression method is adopted to investigate the latter. The
study also attempts to examine household risk coping strategies and limitations in response to
environmental change, as well as the government’s mitigation and coping strategies.
The results show that poverty rate will increase by an average of 16.3 percent if rural
households are unable to access forestry and hunting at all, of which the headcount ratio in
Tonle Sap (wetland) is likely to edge up by 14.1 percent. Drought is likely to increase the
poverty rate by 6 percent, while flood decreases it by 4 percent. The unexpected result for the
case of flood is largely because it is commonly viewed as a source of profit rather than a source
of disaster as it usually contributes to the wealth of biodiversity, abundance of fish and soil
fertility in Cambodia (MRC 2006). Meanwhile, we also find that a 1 percent increase in land
erosion (land productivity as proxy) raises the poverty rate by 3 percent.