Cambodia Corps, Inc.  (CCi)

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Situation

Indigenous Forest Peoples

Many tropical forests are the habitat of preliterate ethnic minority cultures aka Indigenous Forest Peoples (IFPs).  Centuries before there was an industrialized world they shaped their lifestyles around sustaining all renewable resources.  They hunt, fish, gather non timber forestry products, and subsistence farm.  In poor soils they employ swidden farming to replenish nutrients.  Living in harmony with nature their existence is largely carbon neutral.

Excepting wars, until recently most IFPs were left alone in their remote corners of the world.  However as sources of timber, minerals, etc. became more scarce, the regimes which rule them and the extractive industry pushed further into the hinterlands and began pillaging their ecosystems.  Although local and regional markets account for much of the demand it's mostly to satisfy the needs of industrialized nations.

Migrants only interested in immediate economic benefits also invade.  They ignore IFP earth friendly farming methods and clear primary forest which causes deforestation.  Some seize fallowed IFP farm fields forcing them to clear forest elsewhere causing more damage.  Overpopulation causes the IFP communal land allocation system to break down and their man-nature balance becomes unsustainable.

Thus the only ones who’ve made a positive contribution to this planet are reduced to economic refugees or relics for the tourist industry.  Another ecosystem is lost along with a unique culture and their highly complex and very specific knowledge of local vegetation and wildlife.

Montagnards of Vietnam An ethnic minority, highlander, and tribal IFP dated to 200 BC, Montagnards are the original inhabitants of southeast Indochina (Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam).  Their homelands are northeast Cambodia and the adjacent Central Highlands of Vietnam.  They had no written languages until 1952 and a few tribes still don’t. Following the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, the communist Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) denuded the majority of their forests in the Central Highlands for timber export revenues and clear-cut for monocrop plantations.  The ecosystem Montagnards nurtured in Vietnam for 2,000 years is gone.
Further, as Christians and formerly staunch American allies Montagnards in the SRV are oppressed and their culture threatened with extinction.  In 1975 western authorities had their population at one million.  But 24 years later the 1999 SRV Census reported the same number despite a national population explosion of 233%.  That census was published on a SRV website and included a table entitled Composition & Distribution of Vietnamese Ethnic Minority Groups.  After a Montagnard advocacy group made light this alarming data, the ethnic minority table was removed. The very few foreign non profits permitted in the Central Highlands of the SRV are constrained to urban areas.  Montagnards dwell mostly in the "military zones" in the hinterland which are off limits to outsiders.  The only explanation for the huge disparity in the highlander population versus the national increase are stringent government birth control measures. UN Population Control Fund (UNFPA) support for countries is based on consensual sterilization and abortion.  According to Montagnard refugees SRV authorities require their young women to attend marathon family planning classes.  This takes them away from income producing activities and creates economic hardship.  They aren't released until they consent to abortion if pregnant and sterilization.
Montagnards in Cambodia The Central Indochina Ecoregion and the Southern Annamites Montane Rain Forest Ecoregion which once flourished in Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos have been extensively cleared.  The only remaining large blocks are the habitat of the 100,000 Montagnards in Ratanakiri and Mondulkiri Provinces, northeast Cambodia.  They comprise 80% of those provincial populations.      In Cambodia the highlanders are not oppressed rather subjugated by the government and highly marginalized in Khmer society.  They’re also the most illiterate people in Southeast Asia and have the worst public health issues in the country.
1999 - Montagnard hamlet, Post de Shays, Mondulkiri
The quantity of luxury timber in their forests was not sufficient to make large scale logging operations profitable.  However from the late 90’s until just a couple of years ago, logging concessions were sold to Vietnamese, Chinese, Malaysian, and local companies.  They along with Cambodian military units logged the pockets of luxury timber.  Most of it went across the border into Vietnam where it was stockpiled to make furniture for the industrialized nations. Government deals to exploit these forests continue.  Huge tracts of highlander ancestral communal lands and forest have been sold as concessions to the agroindustries of China and Vietnam which are clear-cutting for monocrop plantations.  Though vegetation crops are seasonal moreover not nearly as effective in the earth's carbon cycle  as natural forest. Exacerbating predatory development, in the past three years Khmer elitists with police escorts have been seizing Montagnard farms and communal forest for investment and building vacation homes.  The influx of migrants from the lowlands increases daily and the government is restricting Montagnard access to the forest.  Local Khmer officials boast, “soon the Phnong (hill tribes) will have nothing and they will be gone.” Despite the above damage the highlander ecosystem in Cambodia remains largely intact.  Only the Montagnards can save it but they need help badly. The Battle Against Predatory Development The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) along with numerous other non government organizations (NGOs - non profits in developing countries) are working hard to preserve this ecological treasure.  They also support continued Montagnard stewardship of these resources and realize they’re all that stands in the way of destruction.  Therefore their programs include capacity building components of poverty reduction and improving crop production and traditional livelihoods. Demands for Montagnard University Graduates Naturally such programs are most effective if implemented by NGO employees of the same culture as the beneficiaries.  Indeed the NGOs employ highlanders in low-level positions but when having to hire managers and technical specialists with university education, until our program began there were none.  For these positions they’ve had no choice but to hire Khmer from the lowlands who don’t speak any Montagnard languages, find the frontier primitive, and many can’t empathize with Montagnards.  Thus NGO effectiveness has suffered. The void in university-educated Montagnards also prevents effective representation of Cambodia's highlanders in the growing global Indigenous Forest Peoples (IFP) lobby.  Regionally these are the Asian Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Network (AITPN) and Tebtebba .  They present a united front in UNFCCC, UNDRIP, Kyoto CDM, and the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation & Degradation (REDD) venues.  This lobbying effort is necessary because the worldly environmental gurus in charge have denied IFPs a voice in decisions. Enormous sums of money may soon become available to preserve tropical forests as Carbon Sinks. Without effective IFP representation to ensure funding safeguards, a significant amount will be wasted or as usual end up in the pockets of their rulers.
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