The Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary (KSWS) REDD+ Project partners with local communities through initiatives like Cash for Communities (C4C), providing direct financial support for projects like cow-raising, chicken rearing, and aquaculture. This approach fosters economic growth and natural resource conservation, contributing to deforestation mitigation.
The core tenants of the Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary (KSWS) REDD+ Project’s benefit-sharing work is to strengthen community institutions, improve well-being and livelihoods, and to facilitate sustainable economic development for Indigenous peoples and local communities. These activities help build local capacity to address the main drivers of deforestation.
Among a wide variety of sustainable initiatives within the project, cow-raising has emerged as particularly popular among community members. Through the Cash for Communities (C4C) program — a unique financial benefit-sharing model utilized by Keo Seima REDD+ — 62 cows have been distributed across 6 villages, with further expansion plans underway. The Keo Seima REDD+ employs C4C to provide sustainable finance directly to local communities, enabling villages to access a collaborative platform to identify long-term development goals and the funds to achieve them.
With C4C, communities receive an annual base payment and performance-based bonus, which they use to invest in self-selected projects that matter most to them. This initiative has bolstered community income, facilitating investment in additional sustainable activities such as chicken rearing and aquaculture. By promoting sustainable livelihoods through C4C, community members actively engage in natural resource conservation, thereby contributing to the mitigation of deforestation. C4C has delivered over USD 1 million directly into community-led projects from 2018 to 2023, allowing communities to address the drivers of deforestation while sustaining livelihoods.
