Climate change and tenure rights: Interlinked challenges in Cambodia

Book excerpt: Asia and the Pacific, home to one quarter of the global population including Cambodia, is the region with the highest proportion of weather-related disaster displacements worldwide, experiencing more than 70 percent of storms and half of the floods globally. Such climate change related vulnerabilities pose significant threats to agriculture and food security including drier conditions, higher temperatures, flooding and sea level rise, and make adaptation a high priority. The agricultural sector is considered particularly vulnerable. Temperature rise, floods and extreme weather events are expected to have major negative impacts on agricultural production and food security. Against this background the policy and legal framework in the country is assessed on its preparedness to cope with the changes, risks and opportunities for adaptation and mitigantion actions and the role of tenure in these. A set of country recommendations is provided to enhance the protection of land tenure rights in face of climate change risks and challenges identified and to safeguard tenure rights from the risks posed by the threats of climate change.