Posted on August, 15 2025

In the quiet village of Kampong Chen, nestled in Cambodia’s coastal province of Kampot, the community forestry once stood as a shadow of what it used to be. Years of deforestation, land encroachment and illegal activity had stripped the land of its biodiversity and value. For villagers like Mrs Lo Khmeun, a 26-year-old resident and member of Phnom Torteung Community Forestry (CF), the forest seemed irrelevant to her daily life.  

“It didn’t help me, so I didn’t find it useful,” she said.

This began to change with the arrival of the Leading the Change project, which provided subgrants to five local organizations to implement environmental and livelihood interventions across three landscapes, including in Kampot. The Kampot Community Forestry Network (KCFN), a collective representing 50 community forests like Phnom Torteung CF, received direct support from the project. This support included equipment, patrolling budgets and capacity- building on forest law enforcement, all aimed at strengthening each management committee’s ability to safeguard and restore the forest. 

Read the full story of Lo Khmeun and the forest’s transformation by downloading the PDF.