Of Fish, Monsoons and the Future

A Push to Save Cambodia’s Tonle Sap Lake

International New York Times | 9 June 2014

A girl paddles across the main canal in the floating village of Akol on the Tonle Sap. Overfishing, hydroelectric dams and climate change are threatening the lake's future. Credit Chris Berdik for The New York Times

AKOL, CAMBODIA — As the sun rises on Tonle Sap Lake, fishermen head out from floating villages like this one, past half-submerged mangroves and flooded shrub land, to check their nets, much as they have for centuries.

Every year, the lake yields about 300,000 tons of fish, making it one of the world’s most productive freshwater ecosystems. That and the floods that pulse through it in monsoon season, swelling it to as much as five times its dry-season size, have earned the lake the nickname “Cambodia’s beating heart.”

But the Tonle Sap is in trouble — from overfishing to feed a fast-growing population, from the cutting of mangrove forests that shelter young fish, from hydroelectric dams upstream, and from the dry seasons that are expected to grow hotter and longer with climate change.

Keo Mao, a 42-year-old fisherman from Akol, says he hopes his five children can find a way out of the life that has sustained his family for generations. “The lake now is not really so good,” he said. “There are too many people.”

Video

Play Video|3:24   Cambodia’s Declining Catch

The Tonle Sap, one of the world’s most productive freshwater ecosystems, is in trouble. A group of researchers is working with local fishermen to figure out how to save it.

Video Credit By Steve Sapienza on Publish Date June 9, 2014. Image CreditMak Remissa/European Pressphoto Agency

Now an international team of researchers has joined local fishermen in an ambitious project to save the Tonle Sap. The scientists are building an intricate computer model that aims to track the vast array of connections between human activity and natural systems as they change over time. Begun in 2012, the model will take several years to complete, while threats to the Tonle Sap continue to mount.

A fishy situation in Cambodia’s biggest lake

Tonle Sap Lake, one of most productive fisheries in the world, is struggling to survive over-fishing and dam projects.

Al Jazeera | 17 Aug 2015

Tonle Sap Lake is in danger of over-fishing due to Cambodia's growing population [Luc Forsyth/Al Jazeera]

Phnom Penh, Cambodia - "Turn the lights off soon, or people will see us," the young fisherman said in a muted voice that was barely audible, even in the predawn quiet.

The sky was moonless, and it was pitch-black at 3:30am on Cambodia's Tonle Sap Lake.

"We are in the conservation zone. If they catch us, we will be in trouble," explained the fisherman.

To protect his identity, as fishing in restricted areas is punishable by a two-year jail sentence, he asked that Al Jazeera not reveal his name.

The Tonle Sap is one of the world's most productive freshwater fisheries and the main source of protein and fatty acids for Cambodia's roughly 15 million inhabitants.

[Vietnamization] Dams, Climate Change Lead to Fish Decline in Cambodia’s Tonle Sap: Fishermen

Dams, Climate Change Lead to Fish Decline in Cambodia’s Tonle Sap: Fishermen

RFA | 4 September 2015

Fisherman fish illegally in Lake Tonle Sap, Cambodia, June 4, 2015.  RFA

The fish population in Cambodia’s Tonle Sap lake has declined significantly from a year ago, fishermen in the country’s Kampong Chhnang province said Friday, citing the construction of dams in the area and climate change, among other factors.

Shortages have led to an increased price for fish in the region, making it harder for residents to put food on the table or make prahok, the fermented fish paste that is a staple of the Cambodian diet, according to Sim Sopanha, a member of the provincial Fishing Network nongovernmental organization.

“Villagers can barely catch any fish,” he told RFA’s Khmer Service, adding that although fishermen have made a collective effort to only use sustainable methods, such as rods and legal nets, to ply Southeast Asia’s largest freshwater lake, the population has still declined.

“The fish have been affected by hydroelectric dam construction and climate change, causing their numbers to drop,” he said.

The Tonle Sap, a combined lake and river system that swells in the rainy season, has supported fishing communities living in floating villages of moored houseboats for generations. Many villagers depend on fishing for subsistence and their livelihoods.

Sim Sopanha did not provide details about which dams were responsible for the decrease in fish or specify how climate change had affected the population.

But he said he disagreed with the provincial Fishery Department’s assessment that an increase in fishermen working the Tonle Sap had led to the decline.

“A report from the Fishery Department says there are too many fishermen [on the lake],” he said.

“However, the children of many fishermen have immigrated for work [overseas], so I am confident the fish numbers are declining [due to other reasons].”

Other factors

Other fishermen on the Tonle Sap told RFA that illegal catching methods, flooding and increased immigration of ethnic Vietnamese to the region had contributed to the fall in the lake’s fish population.

They also said new settlers to the area had been cultivating flooded forests that traditionally have served as fish spawning grounds.

[Vietnamization] The Tonle Sap: Cambodia’s Beating Heart

Background:

The Vietnamization of Kampuchea: A New Model of Colonialism (Indochina Report, October 1984)

Part II: Vietnamization of the Economic Framework (continued)

The Unequal Exchange

        

It is within this new institutional framework that the Vietnamese are asserting their hold over the economy and future of Kampuchea.  Fisheries, rubber and rice are the three main sectors affected by what should be termed the Unequal Exchange between Vietnam and Kampuchea. 

As for fisheries, a cooperation accord was signed on 20 January 1984 between Phnom Penh's Ministry of Agriculture and Hanoi's Ministry of Marines Products.

During his visit to Phnom Penh, the Vietnamese Minister Nguyen Tien Trinh has pledged to provide "all kinds of assistance to the PRK's Ministry of Agriculture, including fishing tools and moral, maternal and technical aid for building fishing sites and shrimp boats for sea fishing, in order to develop the Kampuchea-Vietnam solidarity in fisheries."  On this occasion, Khmer Minister of Planning Chea Soth curiously expressed the confidence that "with the assistance of the Vietnamese delegation, Kampuchea's fisheries will soon make progress!"

        

In reality, what is this accord about?  Behind all the redundant jargon, the agreement serves only to sanction the near monopoly of the Vietnamese over the fisheries resources in Kampuchea, and in particular in the Sea-Lake area (Tonle Sap).

 . . .

A boy untangles his family fishing net in the village of Akol.

Image Credit: Luc Forsyth

The Tonle Sap: Cambodia’s Beating Heart

The Tonle Sap is Southeast Asia’s largest lake and Cambodia’s main source of protein, but all is not well on the Great Lake.

The Diplomat | 2 March 2016

Luc Forsyth and Gareth Bright have set out on a journey to follow the Mekong river from sea to source. The Diplomat will be sharing some of the stories they’ve found along the way. For more about the project, check out the whole series here.

Following the Tonle Sap river further inland to the massive lake of the same name, we spent several days on a floating research station as we explored the area’s floating villages, interviewed fishermen, and learned about the great challenges facing the Tonle Sap.

* * *

The Tonle Sap is known to be one of the world’s most productive freshwater ecosystems, but all is not well. Photo by Gareth Bright

Tonle Sap forests razed by fire

Tonle Sap may be drying up, but there will be more land for developers to make more money without, hopefully, evicting anyone. Pseng-Pseng.

Tonle Sap forests razed by fire

Phnom Penh Post | 21 May 2016

 A satellite image from April 13 shows smoke emanating from fires burning in the seasonally flooded forest surrounding the Tonle Sap lake. Each red dot represents a detected fire. NASA Worldview

20 May, 2016 Alessandro Marazzi Sassoon Phnom Penh Post

Nearly 250,000 hectares of flooded forests around the Tonle Sap lake – about a third of the total – have been consumed by fire since January, according to estimates by Conservation International (CI).

PCI Cambodia director Bunra Seng described the situation as a “disaster”.

“Based on data from NASA’s MODIS satellite we found 230,100 hectares burned in Zone 3,” Seng said, referring to the administrative designation for the 640,000 hectares of forest, wetlands and grasslands that surround the Tonle Sap.

While negligence and land grabbing (which often involves conversion of forests into rice fields by burning) are suspected to be the immediate causes of the fires, experts say a combination of man-made and environmental factors are at play.

Climate change and a strong El Niño-induced drought, deforestation and upstream hydropower and irrigation projects all factor into the extremely dry conditions that allowed the wetland forests to burn.

[Vietnamization] Cambodia's 'beating heart' and climate change disaster

Background:

the agreement serves only to sanction the near monopoly of the Vietnamese over the fisheries resources in Kampuchea, and in particular in the Sea-Lake area (Tonle Sap).

Cambodia's 'beating heart' and climate change disaster

Southeast Asia's largest lake - the Tonle Sap - has been decimated by global warming-related drought, Cambodians say.

Al Jazeera | 29 November 2015

Fishermen in the floating village of Chong Kneas say the Tonle Sap is drying up, greatly reducing their catch [Zoe Holman/Al Jazeera]

Typically yielding about 300,000 tonnes of fish each year, the lake is the source of 70 percent of Cambodia's protein and the surrounding floodplains and forests crucial to its agriculture and ecosystems.

Chong Kneas, Cambodia - No celebrations took place this year. For the fourth time since 2010, the Cambodian government cancelled this November's water festival - a hallowed three-day event marking the change in direction of the river feeding Southeast Asia's largest lake, the Tonle Sap.

[Demographic Vietnamization] Floating Villages on Cambodia's Tonle Sap Are Being Scuttled

  [Background / related]

Demographic Vietnamization

 

Hanoi created an elaborate blueprint for moving ten million people from the more densely populated north to the south by the year 2000. - [Chapter 9: Habits of War, p. 355]

The Nguyen Vietnamese settled their newly acquired Khmer territory in a manner that, again, has echoes in modern affairs. First they allowed their least desirable elements to open the territory--vagabonds, deserters, and those banished from their villages... [Now, also sex-traffickers... watch CNN's report "Every Day Cambodia"] The state then selected formal settlers to farm the land and build new villages [reason why the Hun Sen CPP blatantly criminalized Sam Rainsy for shedding light on the problems in Svay Rieng]... Finally, demobilized soldiers were given land grants in the territory in return for their military service [p. 333]...

See also CAMBODIA: A Shattered Society

Tonle Sap 

...

A floating house on Cambodia’s Tonle Sap, Sept. 2016. RFA/Chin Chetha

Floating Villages on Cambodia's Tonle Sap Are Being Scuttled

RFA  | 1 September 2016
 

Thousands of ethnic Vietnamese living in the floating villages that dot the Tonle Sap are being repatriated to Vietnam as their livelihood drains away and they can’t come up with the documentation needed to stay in Cambodia, RFA’s Khmer Service has learned.

While hard numbers are difficult to come by, VietnamNet reported that 5,000 ethnic Vietnamese families who had been living in the floating villages are now living in Vietnam.

A group of Vietnamese still living in the floating village in Kampong Chhnang’s Svay Chrum Commune told RFA that while they were born in Cambodia they are leaving because environmental damage to the Tonle Sap has decimated the fishing and they can’t prove their residency in Cambodia.

[Demographic Vietnamization: Tonle Sap, Fishing] No Criminal Charges Filed in Six-Month Fishing Crackdown

 Background / related:

Tonle Sap

No Criminal Charges Filed in Six-Month Fishing Crackdown

The Cambodia Daily | 19 July 2017

A six-month crackdown on illegal fishing in the Tonle Sap lake region netted hundreds of thousands of meters of illegal gill nets and scores of batteries used in electrocution fishing, but not a single criminal charge in more than 1,500 cases, the government reported on Tuesday.

A report released by the Agriculture Ministry says officials foiled 1,553 cases of illegal fishing in the lake and its tributaries, seized 704,432 meters of illegal gill nets and 274 batteries used in eco-disruptive electrofishing methods.

Interior Minister Sar Kheng and Agriculture Ministry officials meet in Phnom Penh in April to discuss the ongoing crackdown on illegal fishing on the Tonle Sap lake. (Siv Channa/The Cambodia Daily)

[Demographic Vietnamization: Tonle Sap, Environmental Destruction, Fishing, Svay Pak, Criminal Elements] Fleeing Sewage, Houseboat Fleet Floats Into Phnom Penh

[Background / related]

Svay Pak CNN videos

Tonle Sap

[Demographic Vietnamization, Kampong Chhnang, fisheries] ជន អន្តោប្រវេសន៍ វៀតណាម កាន់តែ ច្រើនឡើង កំពុង បន្តរស់នៅ និងប្រកប របរនេសាទ នៅខេត្ត កំពង់ឆ្នាំង | not a word of Khmer spoken, flooding of Vietnamese fishing families, mcerchants in Kampong Chhnang 

The Vietnamization of Kampuchea: A New Model of Colonialism (Indochina Report, October 1984)

*****

Fleeing Sewage, Houseboat Fleet Floats Into Phnom Penh

 The Cambodia Daily | 3 May 2017

Hundreds of floating houses have been snaking down the Tonle Sap river to central Phnom Penh over the past few days, fleeing what one boat owner described on Tuesday as an influx of sewage that killed a massive amount of fish.

“All the fish died, and the water turned smelly and black,” said Mann Ream, 65, who has been farming fish in cages beneath her floating house since 1979, when she relocated to Phnom Penh’s Kilometer 7 neighborhood in Russei Keo district. “It smelled like sewage.”

Black water that smells of sewage flows into the Tonle Sap river 9 km north of downtown Phnom Penh in Svay Pak commune on Tuesday. (Brendan O’Byrne/The Cambodia Daily)

Towed by boats, the flotilla of wooden houses has been slowly making its way along the river since Sunday. As Ms. Ream and dozens of other fish farmers who also live above their stock guided their homes under the Chroy Changva bridge on Tuesday at lunchtime, hundreds of people crowded against the railing and along the riverbanks to watch and take photographs of the unusual sight.

For Ms. Ream, the trip downriver has been a costly inconvenience.

When her fish started dying on Sunday, Ms. Ream could have lost up to 6 million riel, or about $1,500. She saved hundreds of dollars by selling the already-dead fish for a little less than half the price of live fish.

Sewage has killed the farmers’ fish stocks before, and the hundreds of families who farm in the Tonle Sap at Kilometer 7 used to guide their homes downstream once every few years, according to Ms. Ream, who estimated between 200 and 300 floating houses had joined the latest exodus.

But the problem has grown worse in the past three or four years as the capital has expanded and sewage treatment systems have failed to keep pace. In recent years, boat owners have had to move two or three times a year due to fish deaths, sometimes for several days at a time, Ms. Ream said.

According to Taber Hand, a researcher who has studied fisheries on the Tonle Sap and Mekong River for more than 20 years, fish deaths like this are often the result of untreated sewage being pumped into the river.

“The black water sucks out oxygen because of the high biological oxygen demand” of microbes that feed on the sewage, Mr. Hand said. The problem is exacerbated after heavy rains flood the city’s sewage systems, pushing their contents into waterways, he said.

When black water began seeping under her home on Sunday, Ms. Ream suspected the most recent flush of sewage came from 2 km north of the boat’s usual spot, in Svay Pak commune.

Mann Ream squats next to fish cages in the center of her house on the Tonle Sap river in Phnom Penh on Tuesday. (Brendan O’Byrne/The Cambodia Daily)

Reporters who visited the riverbank in Svay Pak on Tuesday saw a stream of black water, about 5 meters wide, that smelled strongly of sewage. It flowed between wooden homes raised on stilts, making its way directly into the Tonle Sap. A pool of black water formed where the stream met the river before it faded into a greenish-blue hue.

[See

[Svay Pak, the epicenter of child trafficking in the Southeast Asian nation. 

["Svay Pak is known around the world as a place where pedophiles come to get little girls," says Brewster, whose organization, Agape International Missions (AIM), has girls as young as four in its care, rescued from traffickers and undergoing rehabilitation in its safehouses....

[Svay Pak, a dusty shantytown on the outskirts of the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, is at the heart of this exploitative trade.

[As one of the most disadvantaged neighborhoods in one of Asia's poorest countries – nearly half the population lives on less than $2 per day -- the poverty in the settlement is overwhelming. The residents are mostly undocumented Vietnamese migrants, many of whom live in ramshackle houseboats on the murky Tonle Sap River, eking out a living farming fish in nets tethered to their homes.]

[See also

Every Day in Cambodia -- WATCH THIS EXTREMELY DISTURBING CNN video of Svay Pak [where at one point, 100% of children born there were trafficked]

Every Day in Cambodia

CNN | 23 March 2014

Mira Sorvino (5:45): Many are sold as virgins by their own parents. As we walked along the dirt road, Don points out a table of men playing cards.  He say they're there every day.

Don Brewster (5:52):  Instead of caring for their family or working, they sit there every day gambling, drinking all day because they traffic kids, including their own.

Mira: Their own?  They traffic their own children?

Don: Others, not just their own. ... They think they're untouchable.

Mira:  Do they even speak English?

Don: No, no.  Most of them speak Vietnamese.

Tonle Sap wetland on the brink of a crisis

[Background / related]

Tonle Sap

...

An aerial photo shows burned areas around the Tonle Sap lake. Alessandro Marazzi Sassoon

Tonle Sap wetland on the brink of a crisis

Phnom Penh Post | 21 July 2016

In a statement last week, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature identified ongoing fires in flooded forests as a major threat to the Tonle Sap lake.

Described by the IUCN “as the heart of Cambodia’s freshwater fisheries, the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia and one of the most productive wetland areas in the world” as well as the source for over 75 per cent of the country’s protein intake, economic and population growth threaten the lake environment.

Record-low water levels, extreme heat and drought conditions exacerbated the burning.

“The clearing of flooded forest for rice has a direct impact on fish recruitment, as well as other wildlife”, it reads.

Beyond fires started accidentally, the group identifies rice-field conversion, hunting and the setting of fish nets as causes. Consequently, “the loss of flooded forest will lead to decreases in both fish and waterbirds.”

In May, the Post reported on the burning of more than a quarter of the Prek Toal wildlife sanctuary’s forests, and estimates by Conservation International indicate that nearly a third of the Tonle Sap UNESCO Biosphere Reserves’ 640,000 hectares of wetlands were consumed.

[Demographic Vietnamization: Tonle Sap] Threats to Tonle Sap Lake outlined at start of Mekong River Commission summit

An aerial view of the Chong Kneas floating village and a number of traditional arrowhead-style fish traps exposed by record low water levels on the Tonle Sap Lake in Siem Reap province in 2016. Over 80,000 people live directly on the lake, and experts say their livelihoods are at risk. Alessandro Marazzi Sassoon

Threats to Tonle Sap Lake outlined at start of Mekong River Commission summit

Phnom Penh Post | 2 March 2018

SIEM REAP – A warning about the increasing threats to Tonle Sap lake, one of the world’s richest freshwater fisheries and a vital source of food for Cambodians, offered a sobering start to the third summit of the Mekong River Commission in Siem Reap on Monday.

[Demographic Vietnamization: Tonle Sap] Support given to Vietnamese expats living on Tonle Sap Lake

The Vietnamese government delegation presents gifts to needy families living on Tonle Sap Lake on September 15 (Photo: VNA)

Support given to Vietnamese expats living on Tonle Sap Lake

 Vietnam Plus | 15 September 2017

Phnom Penh (VNA) – A Vietnamese government delegation on September 15 visited Vietnamese expatriates and Cambodians in Kampong Luong commune of Kro Ko district, Pursat province, which is located on Tonle Sap Lake of Cambodia.

The delegation, led by Deputy Foreign Minister Vu Hong Nam, presented needy families in the locality with more than 800 gift packages.

Nam affirmed that the Vietnamese Party, State and people always pay attention to overseas Vietnamese and poor Cambodians, especially those living on Tonle Sap Lake, and want to help them address difficulties.

Through this fact finding trip, the delegation will suggest the Vietnamese Government and call on businesses to increase investment in this area, which will help enhance the two countries’ cooperation and assist Cambodia to attain the targets of economic development, social stability and environmental protection, he added.

During their visit to Cambodia from September 11 to 17, the Vietnamese delegation is scheduled to tour provinces bordering Tonle Sap Lake and the coastal province of Preah Sihanouk to seek investment and business opportunities for Vietnamese firms.-VNA