The study was conducted in Koh Reysey village, Prorlay Meas Commune, Kampong Leng District, Kampong Chhnang Province.

The main objective of the study is to understand the villagers’ standard of living, hardship, external impact, present and future demand. The team spent 5 days in village, starting from 27th June  to 01st July, 2002. The team interviewed with 15 to 60 villagers including men, women, young and old villagers, represented 135 families in the village.

The main occupations of the villagers are farmers cultivating rice on 299 hectares of seasonal rice and 61.8 hectares dry season rice and fishers. Beside that, they have other occupations such as repairers, making thatch.

There is no formal transfer of knowledge it is based on traditional passing from one to another.

The main natural resources available in the village are: a lack, a river serving as fishing ground and source of water supply to crop farm and dry season rice. A community fishery is established in order to protect and manage natural resources and resolve any problems occur in the village.

The villagers have tradition and culture of helping each other, especially in the events such as celebration or ceremony in the village, exchange between villagers who have mean for agricultural production (the rich) and villagers who have labor (the poor).

Seasonal activities of men and women and the changing of resources, events in the village are shown on figures. It indicated the increasing population, changing of crop and decreasing of fish population in the wild, price fluctuation of agricultural product, destruction of crop by insect, use of pesticides, river bank erosion and use of agricultural machinery.

There are some concerns over the serious effect in the future of river bank erosion, destruction of crop by insect, use of pesticides, and increase of population. In addition, the villagers face a number of difficulties such as can not access to market to sell product so middlemen set the price by themselves, high interest rate, few teachers and hospital is far away from the village as result number of poor people increased.

Government institution and civil society are the two main institutions that impact on their livelihood. There are 15 critical issues that very poor, poor and fair villagers faced. However, lack of credit, seed, boat and fishing gear are the 4 immediate issues that need to be solved.

Information provided by villagers on their living condition and problems occurred as follow:

• The established community fishery committee was not be able to manage their natural resources. Majority of villagers do not realise the benefit of organising community fishery.
• Villagers still heavily depend upon the natural resources and these nature factors.
• Villagers use pesticide and inorganic fertiliser base on their habit, not technical instruction which may effect on crop production and their health.
• Village land area, crop farm area and fish sanctuary area decrease subsequently as due to strong wave of speed boat.
• Increase number of very poor and poor people.

This publication is also available in Khmer.