ABSTRACT
Cambodia is predicted to experience significant threats from climate change, including its urban centres. While the concept of resilience has been enthusiastically adopted in national level documents, it reflects the continued influence of donor funding in Cambodia, rather than an attempt to robustly engage with how the country will move forward into a future of climate uncertainty. Through the assessment of the discourse, institutions and power dynamics that guide resilience policy in Cambodia, this chapter demonstrates how planning priorities in urban areas such as the construction of large-scale satellite cities are actively undermining resilience through the destruction of urban wetlands which currently contribute to flood protection, wastewater treatment and food security. The barriers to delivering on commitments to resilience are fundamentally political and will only be resolved when development planning priorities expand beyond the pursuit of private enrichment for the country’s elite. Until then, resilience exists in Cambodian climate change policy only in discourse and not in reality.
