Cambodian Rural Development Team

About us

They developed a shared vis­ion for the future of Cam­bodia – ‘one free from envir­on­mental degrad­a­tion and poverty’ as they found that in Cam­bodia few rural people sur­vive entirely on what they pro­duce from their own land. They sup­ple­ment their live­li­hoods by hunt­ing, fish­ing or gath­er­ing forest products. But over­fish­ing and defor­est­a­tion are threat­en­ing both this way of liv­ing and eco­sys­tems. The Mekong River Dol­phin and many other crit­ic­ally endangered spe­cies are on the verge of extinc­tion due to destruct­ive nat­ural resource usage.

Our found­ing mem­bers come from rural back­grounds so it’s no stretch of the imagination to learn that they care about rural com­munit­ies. They exper­i­enced poverty first hand in their youth, and saw how closely linked poverty is to nat­ural resources. If live­li­hoods are tied to envir­on­mental issues, a pop­u­la­tion explod­ing after years of atro­cities means more people shar­ing Cambodia’s nat­ural bounty. This free-for-all of nat­ural resource exploit­a­tion cannot last.