UN: Cambodia must address wide rural-urban development divide

via Khmer NZ News Media

Posted : Thu, 01 Jul 2010

By : dpa

Phnom Penh - Cambodia must change the way it targets development or risk worsening already wide disparities between urban and rural areas, a United Nations report warned Thursday.

The report's author, Nicola Crosta of the UN Capital Development Fund, told a conference in Phnom Penh that his research had found "very stark territorial disparities" in the development of the impoverished South-East Asian nation.

"All of this has an impact on Cambodia's growth and can also have an impact on social cohesion and political stability," said Crosta, the fund's chief technical adviser.

The Local Development Outlook Report, which assesses progress at the local level rather than looking solely at the national picture, recommended greater local participation in designing development efforts.

It said the central government should allow local authorities and citizens more input in designing strategies rather than foisting template policies on them.

Crosta said great strides had been made in cutting poverty but noted significant disparities in access to services, such as health care and education, with people in rural areas worse off than those in urban areas.

And he warned the country's natural resources remained under threat.

"The potential is there, but a lot of this potential is not going to stay there forever," Crosta said, adding that Cambodia is at high risk of negative effects of climate change because it has little capacity to adapt.

The research also found large discrepancies in income levels. Despite a decade of strong economic growth, the Gini coefficient, a measure of income inequality, actually worsened in the three years to 2007 from 0.39 to 0.43. That meant the rich benefited more from economic growth than the poor.

The report also noted that progress toward meeting the Millennium Development Goals in health and education varied significantly depending on where people live.

It said most people in urban areas have access to safe water supplies, electricity and toilets.

But fewer than one in 10 rural residents have electricity and just 15 per cent have toilets. Fewer than half can access safe water.

At a national level, around 30 per cent of the 14 million Cambodians lives below the poverty line, down from an estimated 47 per cent in 1993.