The effect of social capital on collective action in community forest management in Cambodia

Over the last two decades, an increasing number of developing countries have decentralised the management of their forests, which has spawned community-based forest management, also known as community forestry (CF). While CF has been promoted in many countries, few studies have provided persuasive empirical evidence of the factors that help community forest users organise collective action to manage the community forests. Furthermore, in the existing studies which link social capital with collective action, few examine whether community forest users' social capital, depleted by past armed conflicts, can be restored. In addition, scant attention has been paid to the importance of social capital in promoting collective action as the basis for community forest management in post-conflict societies. This case study comprised 35 CF communities from Siem Reap Province in Cambodia (a post-conflict society). Using exploratory sequential mixed methods, the study empirically examined whether registered community forest users' (CF members') social capital, severely depleted by past armed conflicts, could be restored and whether existing social capital helped CF members organise collective action to manage community forests. Based on household, village and CF management committee-level data, this study revealed that existing social capital such as social networks and cooperative norms between CF members, which had been depleted by Cambodia's prolonged armed conflicts, helped to organise collective action, although the forms of social capital varied according to the type of collective action involved.