Poverty, Tourism - Bane of Floating Villages

A Cambodian man talks on his mobile phone while sitting next to his bowl of noodles at a floating village office at the Chong Kneas commune in Siem Reap province, 230 kilometers, 142 miles, northwest of the capital Phnom Penh, Cambodia, June 6, 2006. An ethnic Vietnamese woman wearing conical hat is a noodle vendor. Chong Kneas is a sprawling community of houseboats and portable thatched huts on the northern tip of Cambodia's Tonle Sap lake. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

Kalinga Seneviratne
Asia Water Wire*

CHHONG KNEAS, Cambodia, Feb 3 (IPS) - Life ebbs and flows with hardships and vulnerability for the residents of this floating village at the northern end of Cambodia's great lake, the Tonle Sap.

The more than 5,000 people here, living on wooden houses on stilts, depend on fishing for their livelihood.

They face not only problems of pollution, but are seeing their livelihoods come under increasing threat from the activity of commercial fishing operations that use electronic nets or smaller boats to chase fish toward their nets. Their capacity to get bigger catches undercuts the economic lifeline that the Tonle Sap -- the largest freshwater lake in South-east Asia -- is to those living here.

There are other woes as well, ranging from the lack of basic facilities to unwelcome tourist activity, since parts of the lake are but a few hours from Siem Reap, the north-western Cambodian town that is home to the famed Angkor temples.

Living conditions here are far from hygienic, especially during the wet season when the water levels rise and the whole area becomes a floating village. There are no sewage facilities or pipe-borne water. The provincial government has offered residents land on the mountains overlooking the lake, but few are willing to move.

"This is the place of my birth. We don't know how to change," a community fisherman in his fifties, Poeu Sareon, explained. "We don't want to move; we like to fish."

"We lobby fisheries department officials to catch these people (commercial fishers, but) we have no power to stop them giving money to officials," said one fisherwoman.

Sighed Chim Tek, another senior member of the community: "(There is) not enough fish to make a living now. So people change to construction and go and work in construction (sites in Siem Reap city 12 km away) or work in ships (transporting goods to Phnom Penh and back)".

As a result of inaction by officials on locals' resentment against commercial fishing, some frustrated residents have gone to the extent of trying to sabotage these operations, by cutting through the nets used by bigger vessels.

These problems remain such despite efforts over the years to ensure that small fishers who live on and around the lake do not lose access to the rich resources of the Tonle Sap, whose waters provide up to 70 percent of the protein Cambodians get.

Since 1999, the Cambodian government has set aside thousands of hectares in the lake for community fisheries, where community management units look after fishing activities in their areas. In 2003 too, the Asian Development Bank gave a grant of 997,000 U.S. dollars to support local fisheries and take care of the environment. Other non-government groups also support initiatives toward community fishing.

But illegal fishing methods used by the commercial fishers, combined with corrupt fisheries and law enforcement officials undermine the benefits from these approaches, community leaders say.

A 2006 study done by researcher Babette Resurreccion of the Bangkok-based Asian Institute of Technology observes that there is a strong interconnection between livelihood and management of water resources in the community, and that local residents have been threatened or shot by guards or paramilitary personnel when they approach commercial fishing activity areas.

"These guards (hired by the fishing companies) also threaten illegal poachers and guarded lots even when lot owners had illegally extended their boundaries," she said in a report published in the 'Water Resources Development'.

To allow fishing stocks to regenerate, there is ban on any fishing in the lake from August to October. But this is ignored by commercial fishers who bribe officials to turn a blind eye to these transgressions, says Minh Bunly, field coordinator for the local NGO Fisheries Action Coalition Team (FACT).

While most say they would not move from the water, some, like Mao Sophea, says it is time to try their luck elsewhere. "(Because of) increased population in the village, the fish has become less and this leads to illegal fishing. So people want to change jobs," says Sophea,
a young fisherwoman who is about to marry a man from the mountains and move over there.

For those staying on in Chhong Kneas, being the closest Tonle Sap community to the tourism-dependent town of Siem Reap carries with it additional 'hazards'.

The Chhong Kneas water community surrounds the ferry terminal, which is the major landing point for cargo, passengers and fuel bound for Siem Reap from the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh. The easy access to Siem Reap from Chhong Kneas has resulted in many tour companies
operating boat cruises through the waters of the community for foreign tourists.

Locals complain that they have become subjects for photography for tourists but do not gain much from these tours, because they have no capacity to provide any services or goods to these visitors.

"We sit and watch all these people with money going around," laments senior community member Sok Hour. "We can't build big boats to take them, we have no money (for it), and we don't make souvenirs."

"We would like to set up a small business (to cater to the tourists) but the banks will not give us money," complains Doueng Tha, a young woman with an ambition to become a businesswoman. "They want to first come and see your job, and if you have a certificate for land (ownership). They want us to put that in the bank to get small credit."

Clearly however, the challenge remains of how to create awareness within the community on facing big businesses and external factors whose presence may bring in some income to others, but also might deprive locals of access to resources they have had for generations.

Bunly believes that NGOs should play a role in helping local communities be aware of these risks, by helping them assert their rights. "While there is a local fisheries management committee, it is the fisheries department officials who have the power to make decisions, not the community," he explained. "We see the answer to reducing poverty in giving more power to the local management committees ... and equip them with skills to better lobby the governor's and fisheries departments (on protecting their resources)".

(*The Asia Water Wire, coordinated by IPS Asia-Pacific, is a series of features around water and development in the region.)