Sustainable community mechanisms for coping with flood : a case study of a community in Prey Veng Province, Cambodia

Abstract

Cambodia is considered as one of flood vulnerable countries. Local people’s coping capacities, however, should not be overlooked. The study on sustainable community mechanisms for coping with flood was carried out at Ba Baong commune, Prey Veng province, Cambodia. The research study aimed to identify the important factors of sustainable community mechanisms that influence on coping with flood in Cambodia and to discuss the policies and frameworks related to the sustainable community mechanisms to cope with flood. Data collection was conducted regarding to livelihoods of local people in the commune and flood patterns in the relation to the coping mechanisms by document reviews, field observation, focus group discussions, interviews and questionnaire surveys. The study results found that the flood patterns in Ba Baong commune was mainly caused by seasonal overflows of Mekong River coupled with heavy rainfalls at local, national, and regional levels in the catchment of Mekong tributaries. The local people received some extents of flood effects on livelihoods. They implemented many coping strategies to mitigate, prepare, respond and recover from flood adverse impacts. Their coping capacity with the repeated floods depending on the utilization of available resources to achieve beneficial ends and support important actions of local people in order to remediate flood adverse impacts. The resources available in the studied community were referred to livelihood capitals, namely social, human, natural, financial and physical capitals. These capitals supported local people to build and enhance their coping capacities to flood. The availability of community capitals in Ba Baong commune coupled with local knowledge from the repeated floods allowed people to successfully cope with adverse impacts. To achieve sustainable mechanisms; however, the supports from government and NGOs on improvement new flood-resilient practices and technologies should be applied at the community level under consideration of community’s cultural and norms.