Cambodians eat more than 75 kg of fish each year, one of the highest levels of consumption in the world. As much as 15 percent of the country’s population depends on the Tonle Sap lake for its food and thousands depend on the lake’s fish for income.
But in recent years the Tonle Sap has become a source of conflict as people looking to profit from the lake clash with those who depend on it to survive.
Cambodia is hardly alone in dealing with problems that pit conservation and community needs against development. A recently released report from the Asian Development Bank on the troubled meeting place of environmental concerns and economic expansion found that Asia puts a greater burden on its land than any other region in the world.
Nations such as Vietnam and Indonesia have lost between 70 percent and 90 percent of their wildlife habitat to development and deforestation. The hardest hit by environmental degradation are the rural poor, the report states.
“Environmental policy is crucial in meeting this goal. The poor are often most directly dependent upon forests, fisheries, and other natural resources threatened by depletion and degradation,” the report states.
The ADB study concludes with a list of priorities such as poverty reduction, investment in social support programs, governance reform, including legal and judicial reform, and “putting environmental considerations in the forefront of all development decision making and planning.”
In Cambodia, headway is being made in addressing poverty and the maintenance of natural resources, said Urooj Malik, country representative for the ADB.
In 1998, for example, the World Bank predicted that Cambodia’s forests would be depleted by 2003. But forest depletion has been slowed in recent years by a government campaign to curb illegal logging. The progress to date also includes the government’s drafting of a new plan with ADB to reduce poverty by 5 percent by 2005, Malik said. Thirty-six percent of the population live below the poverty line, down from 39 percent in 1996.
Legislation is pending that will manage the forests, fisheries, and land ownership; and agreements to regulate logging concessions are in the works. But as Cambodia moves from planning management of its resources toward implementing the regulations and legislation that will govern them, new challenges arise.
“Enforcement will be the key,” once the regulations and legislation are in place, Malik said. If anything, “there is a need for a stronger political will to transform this into something that can be sustained long term.”
But Toby Carson, World Wide Fund for Nature’s adviser on community-based management, disagrees with Malik.
“The first thing has got to be understanding, not just at the national level,” Carson said. “At a local level people need to understand their laws.”
Srey Marona, a team leader for the WWF’s projects in four Mondolkiri communes, said villagers have little understanding of the new laws.
Ty Sokhun, director-general of the Department of Forestry and Wildlife, told participants at a conservation workshop last week that the government is working to change that. To monitor and enforce conservation, he said, it is necessary to educate local residents while enforcing laws against poaching.
“We don’t want to only establish [the protected areas] on paper,” Ty Sokhun said.
