I attended the South and South Exchange Program Planning Meeting from 05 to 10 January 2012. The meeting aimed to sum-up progresses and achievements of the program in 2011 and also to prepare an exchange program plan for 2012 to 2013. Ten participants who are representatives of 5 partner organizations under this exchange program participated in the meeting, including Baowe from Bhutan, SAEDA from Lao-PDR, CEDAC from Cambodia, SLNF from Sri Lanka, and ENF from Thailand. More importantly, a donor representative from FK (Norwegian Org.), who provides funding support for implementing this program, also participated in the meeting.

The meeting was held at Goldianna Hotel in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and a field trip to Tramkak district, Takeo province was also organized to visit several experimenting farmers who have applied agricultural techniques introduced by Mr. Rasika, the participant from Sri Lanka. During the field trip, I visited three farmers who are experimenting new agricultural techniques, such as Ecological System of Rice Intensification (SRI), vegetable growing techniques by using less water that are resilient to new climate condition especially during the drought period. It is important to note that farmers can also grow vegetables in the plastic bag; many kinds of vegetables can be grown in small space that is affordable for the people who are living in the city. Town dwellers who have limited space to grow vegetables also can apply these techniques. I observe that there are more and more people, especially the people who live in Phnom Penh, have gained further understanding about the negative impact of chemical agricultural product consumption to their health and they prefer to eat organic agricultural products that are locally produced or planted in their own farms.

This exchange program is really good as it provides us more opportunities to share and learn new knowledge and successful experience/best practices in relation to climate smart agricultural techniques, post harvest management and food processing, (vegetable and rice) seed selection and purification, labeling, packaging and marketing etc. The partner organization can learn new things and enhance its human resources on certain topics and skills mentioned above. I would like to stress that, at the end of the meeting, we all decided that eight participants will be exchanged from one to another member country for the exchange program from 2012 to 2013. Women are encouraged to apply !!!

The objectives of the conference were presented as follows:

• To bring together key actors for Asia working on disaster preparedness and risk reeducation at sub national, national, regional and international level, to identify opportunities which can be maximized to ensure greater risk reduction in Asia over the next 25 years in the face of increased risk from climate change and ongoing risks from geologically driven disasters.
• Highlight the potential increase in severe weather events as an expected result of climate change; identify their impact in Asia and appropriate disaster risk reduction (DRR) responses, linked to the recent IPCC report on Severe Weather Events.  Include experts working on climate change adaptation to meet with DRR experts.
• Identify new opportunities for disaster risk reduction and how these can be applied, for instance through the use of the media, working with climate change adaptation programmes and economic development programmes particularly in urban settings.

During the conference, many presenters shared their knowledge and experiences in relation to the natural disasters that recently happened in their respective countries, including the recent flood in Thailand and Pakistan, Wenchuan earthquake, using new technology, disaster risk financing, and reducing risk of the extreme events, and engaging community to manage the natural disaster etc. 

It is very important to note that the MISMANAGEMENT and poor COORDINATION among key stakeholders are vital factors to worsen the natural disasters. We need to make sure that the data and information is transferred very well among the authorities, civil society, private sector, women, children etc. If so, we can mitigate the risk, reduce mortality rate, and increase resilience. On the other hand, to prepare a good disaster management plan, we actually need scientific data, which is accurate and reliable. In the current climate change context, we don’t only need the data from the past and the present but we also need to data from the future, we need to know what will happen in the future. Therefore climate modeling or future forecasting is very important. If we can predict correctly what will happen in the future, we can prepare beforehand to mitigate and respond the risk in an effective manner.

Another interesting point for me is also the Urban Disaster Management. Actually, the urban area is also facing to natural disaster and it needs to be prepared for that. Let imagine, the urban area is strongly relies on the power, if no power — what will happen? If a big flood happens to the urban area, what should we do? Where is the flood way? I think that the people who live in the city or urban area need to understand well about the possible natural disaster especially they need to know how to do if the disaster happens. The government authorities, technicians/ engineers, politician / policy decision makers need to understand and prepare the management plan correctly. Land use planning is also a hot topic that was discussed during the conference.

On 02, December 2011, the M&E working group organized its monthly meeting to share interesting information from the field, key activities and results have been accomplished in the last month, cooperation among the team members to conduct climate vulnerability study in Ratanakiri and Kampong Chhnang province. The study will be conducted from 18-31 January 2011.

During the meeting, Mr. Yim Sok Sophors discussed with other participants about the checklist for collecting additional information of the project entitled “Promoting Climate Resilient Livelihoods of Small Farmers in the most vulnerable dry land areas in Siem Reap andKampongChamProvinces”. Some questions were developed by the participants at that time, included:

• What are the root causes of poverty?
• Is there any linkage between poverty and natural disaster/climate change?
• What are your main challenges in agricultural production?
• What is your monthly expense for children education?
• Who support your children education fee? Are there school programs that support learning materials to children education?
• Why the expense on education less than other expenses of the family?
• Do your children go to school regularly? Which season they go to school regularly or irregularly? Why?
• What is the quality of your children education? Which rank/performance do they get every month?
• Who is the key decision-maker in your family? eg. to take loan, using loan etc?
• Who is the key decision-maker either buying or selling household properties (eg. Land..)?
• How has this knowledge helped you be better prepared? Protect your assets?
• What damages/losses have you suffered due to disasters in the last year? In addition the result related to disaster preparedness expenditure is extremely low. How do you explain this finding?

In the afternoon, Mr.Vang Sean M&E officer of the project Improving Food Security for the most vulnerable families in Prey Veng Province conducted a plenary presentation on his reading document “Using M&E to manage for impact”.

Overall objective: Contribute to the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger among small-scale farmer families in Ratanakiri Province, enhancing their resilience against climate change.

Output 1: Sub-national administrations in Ratanakiri province empowered to take ownership over climate change issues, and to support these local governing bodies through capacity building and institutional strengthening in order to collaboratively develop adaptation and DRR techniques that support rural farmers, especially women.

Output 2: Farmers’ and women’s adaptive improved capacities to climate change through the application of climate resilient agricultural techniques

Output 3: Improved communities’ water accessibility for farming through the rehabilitation of small-scale irrigation systems and the establishment of farmer water-user groups

Expected results

• Seven staff from the PDA will gain extensive knowledge regarding climate change and Disaster Risk Reduction; the PDA will integrate climate change into their development plan, the Commune Investment Plans (CIPs) and Commune Development Plans (CDPs)
• 50 sub-national administration officials will improve their knowledge about climate change adaption, climate-smart agricultural techniques and DRR
• 100 representatives of farmer groups will be trained and have improved capacity to apply climate-smart agricultural techniques
• 400 farmers will apply climate resilient agricultural techniques introduced and disseminated by the project
• 20 demonstration sites will be developed
• Vulnerability Study on Climate Change and Climate Hazards will be conducted
• 100 family fish ponds will be constructed for cultivation of fish culture
• Three natural water reservoirs and three dams will be renovated
• 100 farmer families will receive big jars for storing rainwater during the rainy season
• Six farmer water-user groups will be established and functioning at high-levels
• 20 case studies on best practices and one booklet on the project’s experiences will be produced and widely disseminated to the relevant stakeholders

On 30 November 2011, CEDAC in cooperation with the Provincial Department of Agriculture organized a launching workshop with approximately 70 participants who are village chief, commune councillors, district governor, vice district governors, representatives from government line departments (such as the provincial department of agriculture, environment, water resource and meteorology, women’s affairs..). Mr. Yi Kim Than Program Director and Mr. Yim Sok Sophors Program Officer of CEDAC also participated in the workshop. The major purpose of the launching workshop was to introduce the project, which include the objective, expected outputs, key activities, to the local authorities, government line department and key stakeholders.

Representatives of different government line departments and vice provincial governor presided over the workshop. They provided opening speech at the beginning of the workshop. In general, it is really good that non-governmental organization like CEDAC is working closely with the government departments. It is good to cooperate among private sector, public sector and civil society to address the climate change issues. It is important to notice that Ms. Reiko Kurihara Representative of the funding agency – CCCA also provided impression and presented the CCCA profile to the participants in plenary. Then, Mr. Heang Thira project manager presented the general concept of the project in plenary. Question and answer were conducted at the end of each presentation.

In the afternoon, the participants were divided into small groups discussion to discuss about:

1. what is climate change ?
2. according to your experience, what are the problems and solutions you have been conducted to deal with climate change issues?
3. after the plenary presentation on the project, which expected results may be difficult and easy to achieve?
4. what are the concrete and realistic actions to be implemented in coping with the climate change issues?
5. who are the involvement stakeholders of the project? what are the roles and key responsibilities toward the project?

Each group took about a half hour to discuss the five questions mentioned above and then group representative presented the results in plenary.

At the end of the workshop, the participants strongly impressed about the result of their participation in this workshop. They have understood clearly about the general concept of climate change. For example, they understand what climate change is, causes of climate change, impact of climate change as well as knowledge and experience in dealing with the climate change issues. Lastly, the closing remarks was conducted by H.E. Nap Bunheng vice provincial governor of Ratanakiri province. He strongly supports to the project while the farmers and government line department would have gained their knowledge and experience in implementing the project. At the same time, the adaptive capacity to climate change would be enhanced which result in building a good resilient community in the near future.

It is important to notice that CEDAC and PLAN International is jointly implementing a climate-related project in 325 villages across 34 communes in 6 districts of Siem Reap and Kampong Cham Provinces. The project is provided by the European Union (EU) for five years from 2011 to 2015 with the total budget of €2.33 million.

In the first day, the meeting team conducted a field visit to visit 3 cooperating farmers, who have applied the agricultural innovations introduced by the project such as Ecological Chicken Raising (ECR), vegetable growing, ecological System of Rice Intensification (SRI) etc, in 2 villages (Kok commune, Ponhea Krek district, Kampong Cham province). And then the meeting was held on the second day (08 November 2011).

The meeting focused on the following points:

1. field feedback
2. discussion on annual action plan and budget (2012)
3. review action plan and budget (2011)
4. how to create EU case study
5. communication and visibility
6. audit preparation
7. beneficiary outreach

According to the meeting, key results were achieved and decided below:

Regarding to the field visit, the meeting members have learned that some cooperating farmers have adopted and adapted the agricultural techniques very well. For instance, a cooperating farmer named Sok Soy have applied most of the techniques of ECR. He could respond all questions asked by the meeting members. At the same time, some other farmers have not really applied the technique very well. In case of SRI practices, wife and children are interested to apply the technique, but husband does not understand well about the technique – the husband does not want to apply SRI even he recognizes that SRI produces a better / higher yield compare to the traditional practices; he thinks that SRI is difficult to transplant and consume much time.

To solve the matter mentioned above, the project staff will try to provide further training and follow up support to make sure that those farmers will have learned clearly about the technique. Reward to the best farmers is also considered an option to increase farmers’ attention in applying the agricultural innovations. In addition, the project staff will rotate the training venue from house to house, farm to farm in order to provide 0pportunities for farmers to learn from each other. By doing so, it will raise awareness of farmers who have not applied innovations and at the same time increase effort of the farmers who have applied innovation to work harder.

Another important point discussed during the meeting was criteria of beneficiary selection. The project mainly focus on 3 criteria including subsistence farmers who cannot produce enough food for family consumption, the family who have children from 0-24 months and the family who have cultivated land less than 2 hectares. The project staff will try to select beneficiaries according to the criteria mentioned above.

Mr. Huot Dok project coordinator based in Siem Reap province presented work plan (2012) to all meeting members in plenary. Each project’s activity was presented and discussed one by one. As a result, the project staff and other meeting members who are involved in supporting this project were clear what the project is going to do.

Mr. Yim Sok Sophors program officer of CEDAC’s Field program presented EU case study format to the participants and picked up some examples on the case studies that already produced, e.g food security case study in Mondulkiri and Prey Veng provinces. Mr. Sophors will share those case studies to all participants especially the project staff so that they can use them as model for writing new case studies.

Under the facilitation by Mr. Meas Somica, the participants shared the project progress as well as the affected situation of the current flood to farmers’ livelihood and farming activities. In the mean time, they also raised some possible solutions to be implemented after the flood. For instance, the participants think that it is good if farmers can re-plant rice, plant vegetables, raise chicken, conduct fish culture, select good rice seed for cultivating in the next season etc.

We really don’t focus on the emergency relief at this time, but we will support farmers to conduct appropriate farming activities after the flood. More importantly, we will link emergency relief with the long term development activities. For instance, we provide farmers some rice seedlings but farmers need to conduct SRI cultivation which is followed to the principles of the ecological System of Rice Intensification (SRI). Farmers also can get some vegetable seeds but they need to plant vegetables for consumption and also demonstrate their good practices to the other farmers.

A part of the meeting, Mr. Rasika, a Srilanka Volunteer through the South and South Exchange Program, funded by FK presented Home Gardening Technique in Srilanka. It was very interesting to see the appropriate techniques that can be applied in a limited land. Home gardening is also possible in the small land or even no land for growing vegetables. Mr. Rasika also mentioned that the climate condition in Srilanka and Cambodia is similar so the techniques can be applied here, in Cambodia. All the techniques shared by Mr. Rasika are able to be implemented in both, rainy and dry seasons. In the dry season, some techniques are good as they can save much water for watering the crop. However, vegetable growers need to have some basic knowledge of vegetables. Mr Rasika pledged to present another technique relating to Seed Selection and Seed Purification next monthly meeting.

At the end of the meeting, the participants discussed cooperation across the projects in CEDAC’s Field Program. It is good to notice that Mr. Chhin Chhunhoir, project M&E officer, will spend his time to conduct the end project evaluation for CHES project in Pursat province in November 2011. On the other hand, Miss Pheng Chandy Program Assistant and Mr. Hour Sreng Project Coordinator based in Kampong Cham province will participate in the training on Food Security that will be organized by CARD (Council for Agriculture and Rural Development), Mr Y Kadum will join the NGO Forum on Climate Change Adaptation and Disaster Risk Reduction Management etc. The participants also proposed date for the training on Climate Change Adaptation that will be trained by Dr. Yang Saing Koma on 17-18 November 2011.

According to the meeting, it was good to hear the progress of each project of CEDAC’s Field Program as well as discussion on the affected situation and solution after the flood. More importantly, the presentation on Home Gardening was really interested as some techniques are appropriate to apply in the Cambodia’s climate condition.

In order to address the problem mentioned above, to increase agricultural production and production is a key measure to cope with food shortage. However, people need appropriate agricultural technique or can be called that “Smart Agricultural Technique” to be used for farming in the context of climate change.
CEDAC is a local non-governmental organization is promoting environmentally friendly agricultural technique since its inception in 1999. Currently, several agricultural techniques can be treated as climate smart agricultural technique/climate resilient agricultural technique, for instance the ecological System of Rice Intensification (SRI), Multi-Purpose Farming (MPF), integrated home gardening, Ecological Chicken Raising (ECR), fish culture in impermeable pond etc. CEDAC is promoting farmers to select and purify local seed especially rice seed as well as to train farmers on soil fertility improvement. Normally, simple techniques are recommended to farmers by using local knowledge and resources.

During the meeting, the project staff shared the progress of the project implementation with each other. Then, Mr. Hour Sreng Project Coordinator discussed with the project staff about selection criteria of key farmers. In general, the project will focus on 3 important criteria: Knowledge, Attitude and Skill. On the other hand, key challenges and solutions to promote ecological System of Rice Intensification (SRI) were also raised for in-depth consultation. The project staff will try to explain and work closely with cooperating farmers to ensure that many farmers will have conducted SRI experimentation in this rainy season. In regarding to water harvesting and management, the project will provide technical assistance for farmers to improve/dig family pond, community pond, develop Multi-Purpose Farm, innovate existing canals etc.

In conclusion, the project staff were happy to participate in the meeting as they have gained more understanding of the way to implement the project, specifically they were sure in mind the criteria and methods for key farmer selection. Particularly, the project staff commits to complete key farmer selection by September 2011.