Background

Cambodia is highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change including floods, droughts, windstorms, and seawater intrusion. Agriculture, infrastructure, forestry, human health, and coastal zones are the most affected sectors.

Increased intensity of rainfall during the monsoon seasons could significantly impact flood response management in Cambodia and further afield across the Mekong. Sea level rise threatens Cambodia’s low-lying areas, including settlements, beach resorts, seaports, coastal fisheries, and mangrove forests. Droughts are already a common occurrence in Svay Rieng province, and projected rising temperatures could exacerbate an already vulnerable situation, pushing communities in the area beyond their coping range.

Climate change has critical implications for the people of Cambodia, especially the poor and marginalized. Climate impacts heavily affect the agricultural sector, which means greater impact on the rural poor. Based on the National M&E Framework for Climate Change, out of every 1,000 families in 2014, 16 were affected by floods, 36 by droughts and 2.5 by storms.

UNDP’s work to strengthen and better integrate climate change into the Royal Government of Cambodia’s budget processes is critical – especially in regards to domestic finance as dedicated climate change funding from international sources represents approximately 62% of total climate related investment in 2016.

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Inter-linkages between climate change, gender and human rights in Cambodia

There has been a significant reduction in the poverty rate in Cambodia, which stood at 13.5 percent in 2014 [MOP] compared to 50 percent in 1992, however, there remain many challenges to address including growing inequality – income disparity, regional disparity between the urban population and the rural poor, and gender disparity.

The main national climate change guiding framework – the 2014-2023 Cambodia Climate Change Strategic Plan – addresses gender inequality issues extensively but does not fully explore the linkage between climate change and inequality and a strategic approach for this is required.
The Gender Inequality Index shows that Cambodia has one of the lowest gender equality ranking in comparison with its neighbors. It ranks at 112, compared with Laos (106) Myanmar (80) Thailand (79) and Viet Nam (71). Disaggregated data on sex, age and diversity is not systematically collected and there is no evidence in the use of gender and human rights data in climate change programming and budgeting processes. This creates difficulty for CSOs, government ministries and human rights groups to advocate gender when it comes to climate change budgetary processes.

Creating gender and human rights related data will be critical for not only making a case as to which areas should be strengthened in building climate resilience but also informing public climate change investments. The Ministry of Women’s Affairs is the mandated agency to support line ministries in mainstreaming gender equality into national development plans and budgets. However, as an institution, there are currently limitations to its capacity and political influence in terms integrating gender into sectoral budgets, climate change finance and national budgeting processes.
Action groups have been set up to support gender mainstreaming within the ministries but so far the number of ministries within which these groups have had limited influence.

Women continue to face disadvantages in getting secondary and higher education, well-paid employment and decision-making roles in government. Gender-based violence remains a serious issue. All these factors make the women of Cambodia vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

The majority of Cambodia’s rural poor are women. They are dependent on agriculture and natural resources for their livelihoods and their low economic status means they are unlikely to be able to afford to adapt to climate change impacts or to prepare their land and homes for climate risks. This is also true for indigenous communities and those with disabilities.

In terms of human rights, climate change threatens Cambodian’s rights to life, health, water, food, housing, development and self-determination, especially for the poor and marginalized. Creating platforms for indigenous groups, and those with disabilities, to participate in budget formulation and project design is an area where more work needs to be done.

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Cambodia’s Climate Policies & Change Targets

The National Council for Sustainable Development (NCSD) is responsible for the coordination of the climate response. It brings together 36 government ministries and agencies as well as all provincial governors, under the chairmanship of Ministry of Environment. Within the General Secretariat of NCSD, the Department of Climate Change is responsible for providing technical support to NCSD members on climate change issues.

Cambodia Climate Change Strategic Plan 2014-2023
The Royal Government of Cambodia officially launched the first-ever, Cambodia Climate Change Strategic Plan 2014-2023 (CCCSP) in November 2013. The development of the CCCSP provides the entry point for a structured and coherent approach to integrate climate change into national development processes.
The overarching development plan for the country, the NSDP (2014-2018), states the importance of implementing CCCSP (2014-2023) and contains indicators to track implementation of climate change actions. In the National Strategic Development Plan there is a plan to increase the ratio of climate expenditure on GDP from an estimated 1.39% in 2015 to 1.5% in 2018.

Sectoral Climate Change Policies
Alongside the CCCSP, line ministries have developed their Sectoral Climate Change Strategic Plans (SCCSP) to guide the integration of climate change into their planning. While the CCCSP provides a national perspective and framework for addressing climate change, the SCCSPs of the line ministries focus on sector-specific responses to climate change.

Subnational Planning Guidance
Good coordination of the national and sub-national responses is very important to effectively address climate change. To that end, a guideline for mainstreaming climate change into sub-national planning has been implemented in vulnerable communes and districts under the auspices of the Secretariat of the National Committee for Sub-national Democratic Development (NCDD).

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Our Theory of Change

In Cambodia, PFM reforms are still at an early stage. Budget formulation systems are still being strengthened and programme budgeting is a relatively new concept. Both capacities and systems need strengthening particularly in relation to capturing cross cutting issues such as climate change, gender and human rights. Advocacy and evidence on the economic and social benefits of climate and gender responsive investments are still required to convince decision makers. While there is good political commitment to meet Paris Agreement and Agenda 2030 goals, these systemic issues remain a challenge.

The overarching outcome of the regional programme’s work in Cambodia is for domestic budget systems to enable the delivery of gender responsive climate change-related investments in order to have positive impacts on poverty reduction and human rights.

In order to achieve this, several activities are required including: improving sector ministry budget formulation processes; and improving the design of sector ministry investments. Tracking systems for climate finance also need to be reviewed and improved.

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Our Previous Work in Cambodia

With the assistance of UNDP’s Governance of Climate Change Finance Programme, Cambodia has made progress in integrating climate change in budgeting through the development of a Climate Change Financing Framework (CCFF). This framework included an analysis of financing sources, costing, analysis of climate change impacts on the economy, and recommendations on financing modalities for the implementation of the CCCSP.

In addition, following UNDP assistance, the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MoEF) is producing regular climate public expenditure reviews and the Council for the Development of Cambodia (CDC) have improved tracking of climate finance in the Official Development Assistance (ODA) database. There is also ongoing work in priority sectors to strengthen climate change-related budget submissions and integrate climate change in monitoring and evaluation systems. To build capacity for climate responsive budget formulation within sector ministries, climate finance training modules have also been developed.

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Our Upcoming Activities

The Governance of Climate Change Finance is working with Cambodian government to help enhance gender equality within climate change policies. Some of the key activities that will take place include:

• Technical support and coaching to sector ministries in order to increase the number of climate and gender responsive budgets that are submitted
• Capacity development workshops for sector ministries under NCSD on preparing gender and climate responsive budgets
• Budget negotiations with sectoral ministries and the Ministry of Finance to ensure gender and climate responsiveness
• Gender and climate relevant action research to be conducted on priority projects
• Facilitating the development of clear guidelines on gender and climate change in budget circular
• Macro-economic research on climate impacts to inform the CCFF and budget process
• Policy briefs based on this for advocacy on gender responsive climate investments
• Development of climate and gender tags in the Financial Management Information System
• Support the development of annual CPER reports that increasingly reflect gender and human rights aspects

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