Environmental Education through Eri-culture for Reducing Amounts of Chemical Pesticide Applied in Greater Phnom Penh of Cambodia

Cambodia is located in Southeastern Asia with more than 70% of population is living in rural areas and engaged in agriculture and related sectors. Agriculture is the most important sector for the country, and the government focuses on increasing productivity and trying to meet the international market demand. However, farmers are usually less educated and there are difficulties and obstacles for local farmers to increase knowledge for better ways of agriculture and creating better quality of life. Most of farmers apply agricultural chemicals with low knowledge to increase crop yields that causes various illnesses of local farmers and environmental problems. Statistical data showed that literacy rate of Cambodia from 2005 to 2010 was only 74% for over age of 15 years old. The rate in rural area was much worse than the city. Education for All (EFA) aims to provide quality basic education� for� "every� c itizen� in� every� society."� Although education is one of the fundamental factors for the country to be developed, daily life security such as basic and stable income is more significant for local people. However, ensuring stable income needs basic education such as literacy and basic numerical ability. This paper deals with environmental education through eri-culture, raising eri silkworms, for reducing amounts of chemical pesticide taking into account the perspective of Education for All (EFA) and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Following the first survey in March 2011 for evaluating the potential of local farmers to reduce chemical pesticide through eri- culture, the results showed that expected percentage of chemical pesticide to be reduced for eri silk-raising farmers was remarkably higher than the other farmers. However, research interests have been focused on how much amounts of chemical pesticide local farmers succeeded to reduce compared to the conventional use. So, this study dealt with the evaluation of the amounts of chemical pesticide reduced through eri-culture in Kampong Cham province, Cambodia. The results showed that 35% of eri silk-raising farmers reduced the amounts of chemical pesticide to 80 to 100%, 45 % of eri silk-raising farmers reduced to 60 to 80% while only 5% of eri silk-raising farmers reduced to 20-40% and other 50% reduced to 0-20%. Consequently, eri silk-raising farmers succeeded to reduce the amounts of chemical pesticide use through eri-culture, and eri-culture has educational function to increase the environmental awareness to local farmers, especially, in terms of reducing chemical pesticide use.