Movement of Indigenous Communities Targeting an Agro-Industrial Investment in North-Eastern Cambodia

Abstract

This study examines the dynamics and outcomes of movements by indigenous communities that targeted an agro-industrial investment demanding remedy to adverse impacts on their socio-economic conditions. Since the employment of initial institutional tactics, such as peaceful protests and petitions, yielded no significant outcomes, the indigenous communities escalated their tactics to non-institutional tactics: Violent protests. To respond, the government chose a combination of partial repression and moderate concession. To address the government responses, as well as the demands of indigenous communities, the company mitigated most of the adverse socio-economic impacts. As a result, the indigenous communities were able to achieve most of their demands. This paper, therefore, concludes by arguing that tactical escalation of indigenous community movements from institutional to non-institutional tactics influences the government and company to address the demands of indigenous communities, and also shapes the behaviour of the company operating in a host country with lax and uncertain regulatory enforcement.

Organizaciones de base e injusticia ambiental: La relevancia de las alianzas estratégicas para la incidencia en las políticas públicas. El caso de las políticas de residuos en la Región Metropolitana de Buenos Aires

“…entre los recursos que aumentan la posibilidad de incidencia, los autores señalan características internas como los recursos materiales (Mccarthy y Wolfson, 1996;Ward, 2017) o el número de miembros (burstein y linton, 2002). en cuanto a las estrategias que más favorecen a la incidencia de la acción colectiva, algunos académicos mencionan la utilización de métodos disruptivos (Mcadam y su, 2002;sokphea, 2016), así como estrategias vinculadas a lo discursivo, como, por ejemplo, evitar desarrollar objetivos muy amplios (steedly y Foley, 1979). asimismo, la relevancia de las alianzas como factor explicativo de la incidencia de las organizaciones sociales es señalada por varios autores (carpenter, 2001;Hochstetler y Keck, 2007;steinberg, 2001).…”

Protests, Regulations, and Environmental Accountability in Cambodia

“…Compliance is a process of conforming to specific rules, policies, regulations, and standards (Young, 2016b). Compliance with regulations is measured by the extent to which those who are being regulated adhere to the requirements of a given set of regulations (May and Wood, 2003).…”

“…In regulatory theory, there are several types of regulations, all defined differently by various authors (Levi-Faur, 2011). In addition to regulatory compliance, corporations may change their policies by self-regulating to directly address the concerns of aggrieved communities or stakeholders (Young, 2016b). Self-regulation is an approach made by corporations to establish codes of conduct without the direct coercive intervention of the state/government or other external agencies (such as NGOs).…”

“…The most popular mode and entry point of these foreign investments in agricultural land and other natural resources are joint ventures between the foreign investors/corporations and local politico-commercial elites (Young, 2017). With this type of investment and partnership, and given the ambiguous regulatory enforcement by the concerned regulatory institutions, many of these investments have been accused of having a detrimental impact on poor local and indigenous communities, violating basic human rights, and negatively impacting the natural resources and environment of these communities (Schoenberger, 2017; Young, 2016b, 2017). Given these unfavourable impacts, the affected communities and aggrieved organisations (NGOs) have developed movements to demand accountability from the government and corporations.…”

Modelando las políticas públicas. Estrategias de las organizaciones de base para la incidencia en políticas públicas. Un estudio de casos del Área Metropolitana de Buenos Aires, Argentina

“…Algunos autores enfatizan que las estrategias que más favorecen la incidencia de la acción colectiva son las que hacen uso con alta frecuencia de métodos disruptivos, como la protesta o la movilización (McAdam y Su, 2002), lo cual, en ocasiones, puede incluir el uso de violencia (Young, 2016), aunque sobre este punto no hay acuerdo en la literatura (McAdam y Su, 2002). Otros trabajos, en cambio, señalan las virtudes de la utilización de los canales institucionales (Christel y Gutiérrez, 2017; Gutiérrez e Isuani, 2014) y la cooperación con los decisores (Mitlin, 2008;Najam, 2000; Sorroche, 2017).…”