La société civile cambodgienne : ruptures, incertitudes et ingérences étrangères

Rooted water collectives: Towards an analytical framework

“…Since the 1990s, Cambodia has indeed seen the emergence of a multitude of international and local NGOs (Cambodia is the country with the highest number of NGOs per capita; Formoso and Stock, 2016). Though these NGOs face many challenges to operate in the current Cambodian political climate, they managed to position themselves (often with the support of international counterparts) as potential interlocutors of citizens and the administration.…”

“…The above dynamics are rather well known by water scholars worldwide (see for instance, Suhardiman et al, 2014). They stress the limits of participatory reforms in a country that has long witnessed the imposition of modes of government from outside and where civil society organizations are highly politicized (Formoso and Stock, 2016). It is then no surprise that participatory irrigation reforms have fallen short of democratizing water management.…”

“…The FWN is a federation of 36 FWUC registered in 2011 in the Ministry of Interior; it serves as an experience sharing platform among FWUC but also gives them some level of (political) visibility vis-à-vis the Ministry (as can be the case for production-based farmer collectives -agricultural cooperatives). Such 'loose' networking strategy echoes other instances of civil society coordination existing in Cambodia; it allows citizen to exchange about issues they deem important while largely avoiding political control (see Formoso and Stock, 2016 for a similar argument). The capacity of the ISC and the FWN still need further strengthening and their existence and activities largely hinges on donor-funded projects, but they may announce a civil-society based water-commoning in a country where the main political party exerts strong political control over citizens and the administration alike.…”

“…In a country where the administration is closely linked to a highly personalized political system, patronage networks and family alliances constitute a pillar of social life (Formoso and Stock, 2016) and "civil society" has been built "from outside" by international development organizations, there are instances of coordination that may well herald the emergence of 'water collectives'. In the Cambodian case, RWC is mostly an analytical framework that sheds light on these water collectives rather than a term that can be used to characterize them.…”