> …WHILE DECREASING PRESSURE ON THE NATURAL RESOURCES.
A hundred poor families have benefited from tailor-made interventions to improve their livelihoods.
In 2003, after four years of effort, the project reached the stage where it had sufficient human and financial resources to lay the last stone of its initial vision: supporting a human development respectful of the environment. A systematic socio-economic survey allowed Osmose to select a hundred priority families (former poachers, poor families, women head of households) heavily dependent upon natural resources for their daily subsistence. These 'Osmose families' have since received socio-sanitary services (pediatric consultations, medical transfer, water filters), schooling support, emergency material assistance (house, boat) and/or specific intervention aiming to generate supplementary income: employment as ranger, floating gardens, boat service or water hyacinth handicraft.
 Buntha, coordinator of the village development program |
These alternatives draw essentially in two new resources: conservation and tourism. Each intervention has been preliminary assessed in terms of socio-economic benefits and ecological impact. They directly or indirectly contribute to the reduction of the threats to the environment of the Tonle Sap. This makes of Prek Toal a micro-laboratory of this infamous development that claims the label 'sustainable'. |