Mekong dams could rob millions of their primary protein source

Monday, August 27th, 2012
By : eco-business.com

Hydropower dams planned for the lower mainstem of the Mekong River could decimate fish populations and with them the primary source of protein for 60 million people. The impact of the dams would extend far beyond the river, as people turn to agriculture to replace lost calories, protein and micronutrients, according to a new study by WWF and the Australian National University.

There are 11 planned dam projects on the Mekong mainstem, and another 77 dams planned in the basin by 2030. The study, “Dams on the Mekong River: Lost fish protein and the implications for land and water resources”, looked at two scenarios: replacement of lost fish protein directly attributable to the proposed 11 mainstem dams, and replacement of the net loss in fish protein due to the impact of all 88 proposed dam developments.

If all 11 planned mainstem dams were built, the fish supply would be cut by 16 per cent, with an estimated financial loss of US$476 million a year, according to the study. If all 88 projects were completed, the fish supply could fall 37.8 per cent.

Cambodia's Fortunes Ebb And Flow Along The Mekong

The residents of this floating village on Cambodia's Tonle Sap Lake, south of Siem Reap, are mostly ethnic Vietnamese. Their lives and livelihoods are intimately connected to the waters of the lake and the Mekong and Tonle Sap rivers. (Christopher Brown for NPR)
Mekong In Cambodia (Credit: Nelson Hsu/NPR)
Hundreds of boat crews celebrate the annual water festival on the river in Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh, in early November. The festival marks the day when the Tonle Sap River's current changes direction. (Christopher Brown for NPR)

The Mekong River, one of the world's longest waterways, has a long and turbulent history. From its source in China's central highlands, it passes through six countries as it makes its way to the South China Sea — a journey of nearly 3,000 miles. In a five-part series, NPR's Southeast Asia correspondent Michael Sullivan journeys the length of the river and tells the story of the people who live along its banks.

In Part 4, he reports from Cambodia, where the river has been central to the lives and livelihoods of many in a country that has seen its share of conflict.

February 18, 2010
By Michael Sullivan
National Public Radio (USA)
All Things Considered

Click here to listen to the audio program (MP3)

Cambodia is one of the poorest countries in Asia. But it hasn't always been that way. The Khmer once ruled a vast kingdom that covered not just Cambodia but parts of Vietnam, Thailand and Laos, too.

The empire had its capital at Angkor, near the present-day city of Siem Reap in northwest Cambodia. At its peak, nearly 1 million people lived in the city of Angkor — at a time when London was still a town of 20,000 or so.

The empire's crowning architectural achievement was the magnificent temple of Angkor Wat, one of several dozen temples built by the Angkorian kings, the ruins of which now draw tourists from all over the globe.

Water was key to the Khmer kingdom's prosperity: for irrigation, for drinking and for food from the fish that swam up the Mekong into the Tonle Sap River and the lake of the same name.

"No river, no life. No water, no life in Cambodia," says Pyyoak, my guide.

Invading armies also came up the Mekong in an effort to conquer the Khmer kingdom in the 12th century, a story told in the bas reliefs at Angkor's Bayon temple.

Pyyoak says the Champa, or Cham, came up the Mekong from the south, from what is now Vietnam, and occupied Angkor for four years, from 1177 until 1181.

The stone carvings depict the battle in vivid detail, right down to the uniforms worn by the competing armies.

Pyyoak points to another set of carvings on the wall that depict better times in the kingdom: floating villages, bountiful harvests and an abundance of fish in the river and the lake.

"From here, you can see the daily life of the people; they live on the Mekong River. You can see the floating village and some business people, they are selling on the Mekong River," he explains.

"And life was very good for the people of Angkor then — better than for Cambodians today?" I ask Pyyoak.

"Yes, I think that is right," he replies.

Floating Worlds Under Threat

The floating villages still exist today — the closest on the Tonle Sap Lake, just 20 minutes south of the Angkor ruins by car, then a half-hour more by boat. The Tonle Sap is the largest lake in Southeast Asia and, scientists say, the key to the biodiversity of the entire Mekong basin, thanks to the seasonal flooding of the Mekong and the lake.

Many of the floating villages are populated by ethnic Vietnamese, who just might be distant relatives of the Cham warriors who came up the Mekong to fight more than 800 years ago.

These villages are almost completely self-contained — with floating sawmills, metal shops and grocery boats — a water world where children are born, raised and sometimes die without ever having set foot on land. Batteries power their houseboats, complete with TVs, DVD players and karaoke machines. There are even floating bars to help slake the thirst of day-tripping tourists from nearby Angkor Wat.

But it's a hard life, says fisherman Do Van Thanh, 47, one made even more difficult by a dwindling catch — half what it used to be just a few years ago, he says.

His friend, Tran Van Loi, also 47, is no biologist, but he understands very well the relationship between the river, the lake and the fish, and he smells trouble.

There are more people fishing, he says, and that means fewer fish.

In the past, adult fish would lay their eggs in the Mekong. After hatching, the small fish would find their way to the Tonle Sap, grow up here, and then return to the Mekong, he says. But with so many people fishing, more fish are being caught younger, before they can lay their eggs, he says, and he knows that's not good.

Tran says if he could quit fishing now, he would — but there's no other way to make money.

Making enough money to survive is still a challenge for the majority in Cambodia, one of the poorest countries in Asia. It's a country that would probably be far better off had its recent history not included the four-year-long terror of the Maoist Khmer Rouge. From 1975 to 1979, the regime led by Pol Pot controlled the country, a time when an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians — a quarter of the country's population — died.

Dark Chapter

More than 30 years later, the country experienced a reckoning of sorts last November at the joint U.N. Cambodian Tribunal in the capital, Phnom Penh, where the Mekong and the Tonle Sap rivers converge. The man on trial was Kaing Guek Eav, known by the alias Comrade Duch, an aging Khmer Rouge commander who ran the infamous S-21 prison, also known as Tuol Sleng.

The first senior Khmer Rouge leader to be tried, Duch was charged with crimes against humanity — which included savage beatings, extraction of fingernails and toenails with pliers, and electrocution. The torture ended for almost all of the prisoners at the killing field of Choeung Ek. An estimated 16,000 people were imprisoned at Tuol Sleng; fewer than a dozen are known to have survived.

In court, Duch admitted his guilt and begged for forgiveness.

"I still and forever wish to most respectfully and humbly apologize to the dead souls," he said through an interpreter. "To the survivors, I stand by my acknowledgment of all crimes inflicted on you at S-21. I acknowledge them in both the moral and legal context."

It was an extraordinary moment for many who have waited more than 30 years for some sort of justice and closure. Duch has yet to be sentenced. He claimed, just a few days after this dramatic testimony, that he was a "cog in the machine" who was "just following orders."

Living In And For The Present

But many Cambodians haven't paid much attention to the tribunal, the majority of the population having been born after that dark period in the country's history.

And Phnom Penh — the city the Khmer Rouge leaders once emptied of people in their bid to create an agrarian, utopian state — now has more people than ever.

The capital is attracting more foreign investment and more rural Cambodians looking for work, most of it in construction. The streets of the city are now choked with motorcycles and the Lexuses and Cadillac Escalades of the nouveau riche. The vehicles jockey for position as they pass the construction site of the Gold Tower 42, soon to be the city's newest and tallest skyscraper.

On the riverfront, giant vacuums suck sand from the bottom of the Mekong, which will be used to fill the city's famous Boeung Kak Lake, the site of a new high-end business and residential complex.

It is a controversial project, and a sensitive one, too, which explains why hard men with guns object to my visit to the site. Land grabs such as this one are the scourge of Southeast Asia, not just Cambodia: ordinary citizens displaced by rapacious developers and corrupt government officials.

"Last year was better. The big fish would come down from the Tonle Sap and we could catch enough, and sell enough, to pay for fuel with a little left over for food. But every year it seems to get a little worse." - Nguyen Quynh Thi, who fishes the Mekong in Cambodia

Too Many People, Too Few Fish

Heading downriver from Phnom Penh, the scenery changes quickly. The new skyscrapers and casinos of the capital quickly give way to banana trees, rice and corn. The vast majority of Cambodia's 15 million people live in the countryside, where there is not much choice when it comes to earning a living: farming or fishing.

On this stretch of the Mekong, about 20 miles south of the capital, those who fish have the same complaints as the fishermen on the Tonle Sap.

Nguyen Quynh Thi and her husband haul in their second set of nets for the day, and it's the same as the first: nothing. It's nearly noon, but they will stay out a bit longer, they say, though Nguyen isn't quite sure why.

"Last year was better. The big fish would come down from the Tonle Sap and we could catch enough, and sell enough, to pay for fuel with a little left over for food. But every year it seems to get a little worse," she says.

Too many people chasing too few fish. Farther downstream, just short of where the Mekong flows into neighboring Vietnam, I stop to talk to one last fisherman.

Kong Hout, 48, says he and his family eat fish for breakfast, lunch and dinner. He catches it himself and says there is still enough to go around — for now, if you know where to look.

But what would happen, I ask, if there are no more fish. He doesn't hesitate.

"It would be an age of darkness," he says, with no trace of irony. Then, he thinks about it some more and comes up with something that, for him, is an even more horrible thought:

"Maybe, we'll have to start eating fish from cans."

Next, the journey down the Mekong ends in Vietnam.

If you ever see Monn near Phnom Penh, please help buy his kitchenwares

24 heures…. Autour du pot
by CambodgeSoir

24 hours ... Around the pot

03 Feb 2010
Cambodge Soir Hebdo
Translated from French by Cation

The first episode of the series tells the story of Monn's life, a seller of earthen kitchenware from Kampong Chhnang.

On the first Thursday of each Month, Cambodge Soir Hebdo will show a new episode. The premier of the series tells the story of Monn's life, a seller of earthen kitchenwares from Kampong Chhnang. Each month, Monn travels to Phnom Penh to sell his wares. His daily grind, usually a hard one, is told in this emotional documentary.

The documentary was produced by photographer Nicolas Axelrod.

Saving Cambodia's Great Lake

Hundreds of thousands of families around the lake depend on it to live

Thursday, 29 May 2008
By Philippa Fogarty
BBC News, Tonle Sap lake

Every May, when the rains come, water levels in the Mekong start to rise.

When the river flows into Phnom Penh it meets another river that drains from a lake in central Cambodia.

So full is the Mekong that it reverses that river's flow, forcing water back upstream and expanding the lake more than five-fold.

This is the Tonle Sap, the largest freshwater lake in South East Asia. Cambodians call it the Great Lake.

It is an area of extraordinarily rich biodiversity and a key breeding ground for fish, which migrate upstream from the Mekong to spawn in seasonally-flooded forest areas.

The lake is vital to Cambodia. It provides two-thirds of the country's protein and more than one million people depend on it directly for their livelihoods.

But the lake faces serious threats.

Cambodia's population has risen rapidly and pressure on resources has increased. Fish stocks are threatened by over-exploitation and illegal fishing methods.

Farmers and developers have taken advantage of weak governance to seize and drain land in the flooded forest, destroying key wildlife habitats and polluting the lake.

More trees have been felled for domestic use by local people, some of whom have been hunting rare wildlife to compensate for smaller fish catches.

Last year, Prime Minister Hun Sen warned of a "serious environmental disaster" if the problems were not addressed.

Fish sanctuary

The Asian Development Bank-financed Tonle Sap Environmental Management Project (TSEMP) is leading efforts to do that.

Eight years ago, more than half the lots on the lake allocated to commercial fishing were released to local communities.

Part of TSEMP's work is helping villages create legally-recognised community fisheries to protect and preserve their own resources. More than 170 of these groups have now been set up.

Life on the lake

Soer Tao is deputy head of the community fishery in Kampong Klaeng, on the lake's northeast shore.

The village is home to about 10,000 people living in stilted houses to cope with the seasonal flooding. Some 85% of residents depend on fishing for their livelihoods.

Ten years ago, Soer Tao says, illegal fishing and destruction of the forest were causing serious problems to villagers. But local management of resources is bringing benefits.

The village boundaries have been formally set. Residents patrol the area and if people are fishing illegally or if developers are trying to encroach into the flooded forest, they should now be better positioned to tackle the problem.

The village has also established a fish sanctuary, 300 metres by 30 metres, where fish can spawn during the dry season. It is marked by red flags and guarded at each end.

When the flooding comes, the fish will swim out - hopefully in greater numbers every year.

"The fish sanctuary will protect the fish as livelihoods for everyone," Soer Tao said.

New projects

But it is not just about protecting fisheries.

Preak Toal is a floating village. Everything floats, even the school and the petrol station, and everyone depends on the lake to live.

Many people live in floating communities on the lake

Now projects are being set up to help families diversify their livelihoods away from the lake in a bid to reduce pressure on resources.

Former poachers patrol a biosphere reserve, guarding the rare water birds that they used to hunt. Tourists pay to enter and local families use pedalos to show the day-trippers around.

Some residents have built floating gardens for fruit and vegetables, while others are growing mushrooms in their floating houses. One group is trying to turn water hyacinth into charcoal-like fuel.

But the initiatives are, of course, not perfect. It is still much simpler for villagers to get firewood from the forests and to sell fish for quick profit.
'Turning point'

Dr Neou Bonheur, director of TSEMP, admits that trying to promote environmental awareness to those struggling to make a living can be difficult.

Dr Bonheur says efforts to protect the lake must be sustained

"It is hard," he says, "but when we teach them not to cut the forest because it is a breeding ground for the fish, they see the benefits of that."

The villagers, he says, are not the greatest challenge.

"Now we are at a turning point - rice and fuel prices are up and there is a tendency to look for resources such as land, not from the communities but from outside groups who want to claim areas for development.

"That's the most difficult thing for us, the people who damage the communities and fisheries in that way."

Community resource management was put in place at the right time, he says, but it must be strengthened to ensure local people have a permanent voice.

He describes efforts to date as "so far, so good", but says they must be sustained.

"We cannot say it is now enough - we have to continue to work hard on many areas."

But there is one key issue Cambodia cannot control.

China, Thailand and Laos all want to dam the Mekong for hydropower, something experts say could have a serious effect on the seasonal influx of water and wildlife into the lake.

"We are a downstream country and less powerful compared to upstream countries," says Dr Bonheur. "We can only hope that through dialogue, Cambodia can voice its concern."

"The Tonle Sap is a great asset for Cambodia. We must protect it at all cost."