Country Comments

Cambodia currently exceeds its carrying capacity by about 20%. Population growth is slowing based on a decrease in fertility rates from more than 4 children per mother in 2000 to approximately 2 ½ children today. In addition, an increase of emigration by young Cambodians seeking employment opportunities abroad has also played a role.

Still a large population continues to put pressure on much of Cambodia’s forests resulting in land encroachment, harvesting of non-timber forest products inside restricted zones, and poaching. The number of illegal land clearing has also increased by 36% with 29 occurrences recorded during the period of December 2019-May 2020 and only 12 occurrences registered in December 2018-May 2019.

Economic growth since achieving peace in the 1990’s, coupled with better access to contraception and an emphasis in narrowing the gap in education between boys and girls, bodes well for continued decline in population growth and improvement in the health and welfare of its people.

Despite such impressive achievements, a number of challenges remain –The labour market is still dominated by poorly educated and low skilled workers; there is a serious lack of semi-skilled and skilled workers to meet changing labour market needs (CDRI, 2013) and in the World Bank’s Country Policy and Institutional Assessment, Cambodia scored lowest for transparency, accountability, and corruption in the public sector rating among the series in 2015.