ECOLOGY
Cambodia's tonle sap in distress
Global warming and economic exploitation destabilise key lake's
ecosystem
Published on April 24, 2008
Nantiya Tangwisutijit
The Nation
The Great Lake of Tonle Sap has always been Cambodia's spring of life.
Abundant fish stock and seasonal flooding to fertilise rice fields
have blessed the region long before the builders of Angkor Wat arrived
900 years ago.
But economic development policies are having the reverse effect.
Locals are finding it more difficult to survive, a trend that may only
worsen as climate change continues to take hold.
Tonle Sap is Southeast Asia's largest lake, and the source of protein-
rich food for Cambodia's 14 million people. As such, the government
has sought assistance to aggressively exploit its fisheries under the
banner of poverty reduction. But Cambodian sociologist Mak Sithirith
of the Fisheries Action Coalition Team said it is not the poor who are
benefiting.
Under the scheme, the Cambodian government built infrastructure and
introduced market economy to Tonle Sap communities. This has resulted
in the end of interdependence between fi****ng and farming communities,
Mak said. The traditional barter system between those growing rice and
those catching fish disappeared after an industry of middlemen evolved
to wander from village to village, exchanging rice and fish for cash.
"Neighbouring communities who used to rely on one another now compete
for material consumption and ac***ulation obtained by cash and loans,"
Mak said.
The traditional small-scale fishermen are losing out entirely. The
Cambodian government sold fi****ng concessions to large fi****ng
businesses, banning villagers from the waters that ensured their
livelihoods.
Scientists also suspect that changes of water flows caused by dam
construction on the lower Mekong River and tributaries may affect the
delicate relation****p between the Mekong and Tonle Sap. During the
rainy season, water flows from the Mekong to fill the lake, with the
reverse occurring as the dry season settles in.
Climate change is adding a new level of anxiety. A coalition of Thai
and Finnish scientists will soon begin a project to examine the
potential climate-change impacts that those around Tonle Sap might
experience in the next 50 years.
"Tonle Sap's topography makes the lake very sensitive to changes,"
Suppakorn Chinvanno of the Bangkok-based Southeast Asia Start Regional
Centre said. "A water-level rise of just 0.3 metres can mean a
kilometre more flooding on land because of the flat landscape."
This article is based in part on a presentation by Mak Sithirith at
the third International Conference of the Asian Rural Sociology
Association in Beijing.
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