Risk analysis
Flood and Drought Analysis
Cambodia has been repeatedly hit by natural disasters, particularly floods and droughts, over the last decade. Because many Cambodians depend upon subsistence agriculture for their livelihoods, they are particularly vulnerable to suffering hunger, poverty, or even the loss of life, when such disasters hit. This vulnerability has increased in recent years because of a series of almost consecutive annual disasters that have not allowed people the opportunity to recover from previous floods or droughts.
The Royal Government of Cambodia and other stakeholders, including NGOs and the donor community, have been increasing cooperation to allow for joint responses to the needs of the affected population when disasters strike. The overall goal is to ascertain and address the root causes of vulnerability to disasters. There is thus a need to identify and prioritize areas that are prone to natural disasters, and areas in which the population suffers most when disasters strike.
In 2003, WFP in close collaboration with the National Committee for Disaster Management (NCDM) studied to identify areas prone to flood and drought in Cambodia.
Defining Priority Areas Vulnerable to Floods
To determine areas that should be priorities for flood related interventions, three issues are taken into account: flood affected areas, rice dependency, and food security. The degrees to which each commune is affected by flood waters, dependent on rice production, and unable to produce enough food to feed itself during flood years are taken together to categorize communes into different levels of priority.
The project identified two major types of flood in Cambodia: flash floods and central area floods. Flash floods result from heavy downpours upstream on the Mekong River and affect the provinces along the Mekong and in the southern areas of the country. The most recent flash floods occurred in 2001. Central area floods are large floods that result from a combination of runoff from the Mekong and heavy rains around the Tonle Sap Lake. The waters affect the provinces around the lake, but also flow heavily down the Tonle Sap River and the lower portion of the Mekong to flood the southern provinces. Floods of this nature occurred in 1996, and in 2000, when the country saw the worst flooding in 70 years.
Data on flood-affected areas are drawn partly from satellite images showing the extent of floods, and partly from crop assessments by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) and the FAO/WFP, which give estimates of the proportion of a commune's wet season rice growing area destroyed by floods. For the purposes of the analysis, communes are defined as severely flood affected in a given year if the satellite imagery shows they were inundated, and if the crop data shows that the flood destroyed 20 percent or more of the rice growing area.
Rice dependency is considered because the more dependent people are upon their rice crops, the more likely they are to be adversely affected by flooding. Communes are considered highly rice dependent if more than 80 percent of households are fully engaged in rice production. Data for this indicator are drawn from the MAFF and FAO/WFP crop assessments.
Food security is important as it measures the extent to which communes are able to grow enough rice for their population to eat during and after flood years. Crop assessment data are used to calculate the food deficit or surplus for each commune based on a per capita need of 152 kg of milled rice per year. A commune is classified as being food insecure if there are more than two months of rice deficit per capita per year. Data for the flood years of 1996 and 2000 are used.
Having defined whether or not each commune was severely affected by the floods of 1996, 2000, and 2001, whether or not it is highly rice dependent, and whether or not it is food insecure during flood years, the communes can then be classified into three different levels of priority. First priority communes were severely affected by floods in 1996, 2000, and 2001, were food insecure in 1996 and 2000, and are highly rice dependent. This combination implies that people are vulnerable to both flash floods and central area floods and are likely to face food shortages once floods hit. Second priority communes were severely affected by central area floods in 1996 and 2000, were food insecure in these years, and are highly rice dependent. Third priority communes were severely affected by the flash floods of 2000 but not the central area floods. They were food insecure in 1996 and 2000 and are highly dependent on rice production. These classifications essentially cover three different kinds of areas that are vulnerable to floods. The first priority group is severely affected by any kind of flood, the second group is only affected by the big central area floods, and the third group is only affected by flash flooding of the Mekong. Thus, when a flood of a particular type hits the country, policy-makers immediately know where to start prioritizing their relief efforts. These three priority areas are shown in Map 8.1.
Map 8.1: Flood Prone Communes
Defining Priority Areas Vulnerable to Droughts
The methodology used for defining areas vulnerable to drought is similar to that discussed above. The issues analysed were: drought affected areas, rice dependency, and food security. Data on precipitation and the Normalized Differential Vegetation Index (NDVI - a measure of the greenness of vegetation and a proxy for agricultural productivity) were used to identify drought-affected areas. Precipitation was considered low if the 30-year wet season average was less than 470 mm per annum. NDVI was considered low if the 20-year wet season average was less than 0.4 on a scale that runs from -1 to 1. Communes were again defined as highly rice dependent if more than 80 percent of households are fully engaged in rice production. Food insecurity was measured as above (more than two months of rice deficit per capita per year) for the drought year of 1998.
Definitions for three levels of priority were again developed. First priority communes were defined as those with low precipitation and NDVI, high rice dependence, and food insecurity in 1998. These are communes where droughts are likely, and where they will have the worst consequences. Second priority communes have the same criteria as the first priority communes, but were not food insecure during the 1998 drought year. Third priority communes have low precipitation and NDVI, and are thus drought prone, but are neither highly rice dependent nor food insecure. The three levels of priority communes are presented in Map 8.2.
Map 8.2: Drought Prone Communes
Market Price Fluctuation
Constant food market price fluctuations result in farmers never being sure if they are going to get a good monetary return for their yield. Similarly households also do not know if they are going to be food secure (since sudden increase in prices will lead to less food being bought and necessitate the use of coping strategies).
Figure 8.1: Price Trends of Paddy Rice in Cambodia
Source: MAFF (raw data)
The farmers' position is the weakest in the value chain. Lack of information and lack of finance (and the lack of access to finance) are the main reasons forcing farmers to dispose of their stock as quickly as possible and at whatever price is available. For example the UNDP 2007 Human Development Report notes that ethnic minorities reported selling cashews at 400 riel/kg in Rattanakiri, while others got almost 1,000 riels for the same crop quality in the same market. When the market is at its peak, it is the merchant, not the farmer, who gains
In the case of Rice; paddy price support to farmers existed by way of monopoly paddy procurement by the Government between 1981 and 1989. Thereafter, markets were fully privatized. Currently, the paddy/rice marketing system consists of many players (Figure 8.2). As a rule, the greater the number of intermediaries / players in the value chain the less the share of profit to the farmer as more players imply the existence of many commissions, costs and rents. Also at each stage, the price of the good as it moves along the marketing chain increases and thus wide margins are found (1:1.7) between what the farmer gets and what the consumer pays, as seen for paddy. (Figure 8.3) (UNDP, 2007).
Note: In the case of rice milling accounts for part of the price gap, but the miller keeps the bran and chaff, whose cost is about the cost of milling plus only a nominal profit.
Figure 8.2: Rice marketing in Cambodia
Source: Sok, Chea, Sik (2001)
Figure 8.3: Price Margins from Paddy to Rice and Farmer to Consumer (%), 2003
