Natural resources such as fresh water and soil are vital for sustainable agriculture, and the forests surrounding Andong Teuk play a crucial role in both maintaining ground water level and soil preservation, plus give natural living space for a wide range of endangered wildlife species.
An important part of BCDO's mission is the education of the young generation about the impact of deforestation and poaching and the advice about environment-friendly alternatives.
BCDO is driven to increase local awareness of environmental issues, healthcare and expenses. BCDO is providing learning sessions on how to make briquette fuels constant fuel supplies from different leaves and grasses. This project works to help community members lessen their dependency on non-renewable resources for their daily needs. By lessening the dependency on firewood, briquettes work to reduce levels of indoor air pollution such as smoke, as well as reduce the labor required for woodcutting. In this chapter, BCDO provides the demonstration on methodological and formulaic products of briquette pressing setup. Women are the first priority in encouraging a briquettes project in order to promote the alternative environmental issues.
a. Briquettes produce more heat and are a reliable source of fuel for cook with less smoke, lessening the harm of indoor cooking and labor requirement of fire fuels.
b. Briquettes are relatively simple in production and collection and are easily transported, lessening labor in both production and transport. Production necessities are cheap and in some cases free of cost. The only inputs necessary are readily available and renewable sources such as leaves, grasses and farming wastes.
Currently, daily cooking in Thma Sa is done with open fire and wood. As a result, large amounts of firewood are needed and cut in the area. To reduce this, BCDO is promoting small low-cost biogas installations as an alternative to the firewood to the villagers of Thma Sa. As a side product, the remains of the biogas process can be used as fertilizer for organic farming.
The pictures below illustrate the simpliciy of the biogas production, starting from the low-cost setup and the freely available cow dung or kitchen remains as the natural resource until the gas hub is working.
Littering is a big problem in rural areas in Cambodia. People are just not aware that thrown away plastic bags, bottles etc not decompose naturally, and with increasing consumption of modern plastic-wrapped goods streets, rivers and fields get more and more polluted.
BCDO educates and encourages its pupils to keep the environment clean. Joint actions with the State school to clean public areas are held every month.
In the future, we would like to establish public rubbish bins and promote recycling.
"Waste management is easy!"
See our kids cleaning the Pagoda (Feb. 2011)
Even though it is illegal, locals do hunt wildlife such as boar, civet, pangolin,snake,lizard, deer, tortiose, mouse dear, slow loris etc. For them, wildlife is not only a source of food, yet due to the high prices achieved on the black market a great and easy source of income. For example, one kilogram of pangolin is worth more than 150$ here.
Since it is difficult to change habits at once, BCDO educates its pupils not to hunt endangered species in future, thus hopefully decreasing the poaching in the long run.
An important way to reduce the logging in the surrounding forests is to create alternatives for firewood for cooking. BCDO establishes Biogas installations that will provide gas for cooking instead of firewood...