ECOLAND or Ecosystem Services and Land Use is a research centre based at Royal University of Agriculture (RUA), Cambodia. It has been created in January 2014 in cooperation between Institute of Research for Development (IRD) in France and RUA. Its main goal is to provide scientific activities on topic related to “ecosystem services, rural development, land use management, and conservation”.  Since 2013, the centre was initially co-founded by Dr. Malyne NEANG and establishing joint by young researchers, who expertise mainly in field of economics (agricultural and environmental economics). Otherwise, the center opens to scientists in other fields (e.g. agronomy, environmental science, geography, etc.). 

The center has developed research collaborations linked to national, regional, and international institutions. Thus, its collaborations are based on student exchange (Master and Ph.D) and co-management of research programs. The center also welcomes to researchers from other institutions in order to build partnership for joint projects. The expectation of the center is to participate in international scientific debates and to contribute in policy making related to agricultural and rural development, value chains, natural resource use and conservation, forest management and ecosystem service provision. Beside research activities, the center aims at contributing in curriculum development and capacity building at RUA. 

MISSION and OBJECTIVES

• Building scientific capacity of Master, Ph.D., and Post-doctoral degree
  • Teaching at bachelor and master degree at RUA.
  • Looking for scholarship for master, Ph.D., and post Ph.D. studies.
  • Providing training for team members and others (literature review and references management, proposal writing, data analysis, scientific paper writing, etc.).
  • Supervising students for conducting thesis field research.
• Enforce and enlarge scientific collaboration at different levels
  • Enforcing national collaborations: partnership with other universities, provincial departments of agriculture, organizations, and other institutions.
  • Enforcing and enlarging national and international networks and collaborations (please see our partners in OUR PARTNERS page).
  • Enforcing internal collaboration within RUA departments, Centres, and faculties.
• Produce scientific outputs: publications, field data of ecosystem, of land uses and land use change, and of value chains...
  • Collecting and combining data from the field to be able to provide data sources from different ecosystems, provinces and socio-economic situation in Cambodia, which can serve others scholars for their analysis and database.
• Analyze international agenda, agreement or issue in fields of ecosystem services, rural development, land use management, and conservation.