The interviewee is a senior government official based at the Department of Environment in a provincial city. He is ethnically Khmer and speaks English. No translator was used. The interviewer is a 21-year old female, Anglo-Celtic Australian undergraduate student from the University of Sydney. Before agreeing to participate in the interview, the interviewee was read a Participation Information Statement in accordance with the requirements of the University of Sydney’s Human Research Ethics Committee thus ensuring confidentiality, anonymity and voluntary participation. The interview, which took place during April at the Department of Environment offices, was recorded with a digital voice recorder and subsequently transcribed. For convenience, the interviewer is referred to as INT below, and the interviewee is given the code A1. Time stamps are given in square parentheses.
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INT |
Do you think that the management of Yeak Loam with the community is a good model for other places? |
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A1 |
I think it is good, but I think the others have some problems. As Yeak Loam is near the province capital, near the town, so if something happens, some problem, it is easy for them to complain. In other areas if there is a problem like land encroachment…it gets smaller and smaller due to illegal activities from land encroachment, and mining, just small scale. |
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INT |
And with a lot of the mining and encroachment, is that Cambodians coming here, or people from other places? |
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A1 |
It is local people and immigrants from other provinces. But mostly it is local people, as people who come here from other provinces, they use money, they can clear the area about 1ha, which can provide $1000, and local people do the clearing and give to others. So this is a problem. The others usually afraid to do by themselves so they hire local people as they have money, and the local people do for them, and when the authorities go to arrest the local people they say they don’t know as somebody just hire them. There is a lot of land encroachment… the area is land conflict in Cambodia, not happen everywhere but in Ratanakiri. Now the government try to solve the problem, we have from government ‘Old Policy, New Activity’ to try and stop the land conflict. They say Old Policy, New Activity to try and stop the problem, but it still happens. By maybe more than one year already but still happens. |
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INT |
[35:20] So the new policy, what does it say? |
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A1 |
So Old Policy New Activity, name is O-P-N-A, as the government say is old problem, from long time ago to solve problem. Same policy of the government, old policy they try to promote the new activity to stop, so the state of the public—of the public—many type of lands—public land, private land of the state, and then private land, something like that, and people they – say before May 2012 they have ownership, but after that no, and they send many students form Phnom Penh to check problem. When people hear new about the activity they try to cut more forest to get ownership. Now we have a lot of land conflict, but even the government cut land for the local people, but still have conflict as people try to cut more, waiting for opportunity. |
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INT |
[38:15] A lot of Tampaun used to live very close to the lake, and now they live far away. Is this because they sold their land? |
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A1 |
Oh yes, because they sold their land, as before around here just Tampaun, not many Khmer people from the lowlands, and then Khmer people come here and people need land when they come here. And local people need money, motorbikes, so that’s why they sold their land. And it is easy for local people to sell land, there is a lot of land here, and so they find other land. Many local people want to sell land here and go to live near the national park as there is a lot of land there. And we try to stop them, because the national park gets cleared, and this is problem. And I think this happen like this everywhere, even in European but there it has finished. The land conflict already finish, as those people all understand about law, and also the government can arrest somebody and they go to jail, but here it is difficult for them to do that, as here some people poor educated, and they don’t understand about that, they just know about their habitat. They know that if you need more land, they just cut and then cut again, so we need to educate them. But when we study about it in other countries, but they already finish maybe 100 years ago, like maybe in Japan or something… but maybe in Australia, did that already finish? |
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INT |
[41:50] Yeah it happened in Australia….. |
This is a small extract from the full interview, the full transcription of which runs to 10 pages of notes. In total, 15 hours of interviews were recorded, with 180 pages of transcription.
Once you have read the extract, you may answer the quiz questions.
It is important to remember that the learning outcome is to introduce you to qualitative methods in human geography and to experience ways in which qualitative data might be produced and used. Your specific knowledge of the topic, derived from the interviews, is less important.
For those of you interested in this material and how it was used, we refer you:
Penny, D., Williams, G., Gillespie, J., Khem, R. (2016). ‘Here be dragons’: Integrating scientific data and place-based observation for environmental management. Applied Geography, 73, 38-46.
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