A story of communities: boundaries, geographical composition and social coherence in a forest conservation project, Northern Cambodia

Explicit notions of communities, as key actors in conservation and development projects across the Global South, are common. Narratives about indigenous people or forest-dependent communities in forest conservation programmes prevail, portraying a picture of communities as homogeneous and harmonious entities. In this study, we unfold communities as a construct with an empirical example of a community-based forest protection project, Northern Cambodia. Based on qualitative interviews, field observations and document analysis, we examine the community construct in terms of establishment of boundaries, geographical composition and social coherence. We not only find that the establishment of forest community boundaries are dominated by powerful external actors rather than the community members themselves, but that the spatial composition of communities is complex, and affects the ability of local people to benefit from the project. We also find that the studied communities show low levels of social coherence and mainly consist of migrant farmers, as opposed to common policy narratives. Taking these inconsistencies into account, we discuss implications of constructing communities for the success of forest conservation projects, and argue in favour of more discursive and political analyses to better understand, acknowledge and adapt to existing and changing conditions in present and prospective project locations.