Belong­ing to the first edu­cated gen­er­a­tion after the Khmer Rouge period, the 5 founders of the Cam­bod­ian Rural Devel­op­ment Team (CRDT) were dis­ad­vant­aged rural children. Access to edu­ca­tion was an uphill struggle. Hard work and extraordin­ary cir­cum­stances saw their founders meet­ing at uni­ver­sity, and being in the minor­ity com­ing from under­priv­ileged back­grounds, they ban­ded together as a team.

They developed a shared vis­ion for the future of Cam­bodia – ‘one free from envir­on­mental degrad­a­tion and poverty’ as they found that in Cam­bodia few rural people sur­vive entirely on what they pro­duce from their own land. They sup­ple­ment their live­li­hoods by hunt­ing, fish­ing or gath­er­ing forest products. But over­fish­ing and defor­est­a­tion are threat­en­ing both this way of liv­ing and eco­sys­tems. The Mekong River Dol­phin and many other crit­ic­ally endangered spe­cies are on the verge of extinc­tion due to destruct­ive nat­ural resource usage.

Their found­ing mem­bers come from rural back­grounds so it’s no stretch of the imagination to learn that they care about rural com­munit­ies. They exper­i­enced poverty first hand in their youth, and saw how closely linked poverty is to nat­ural resources. If live­li­hoods are tied to envir­on­mental issues, a pop­u­la­tion explod­ing after years of atro­cities means more people shar­ing Cambodia’s nat­ural bounty. This free-for-all of nat­ural resource exploit­a­tion cannot last.