Cambodia's giant life-giving Tonle Sap lake in peril

[geovalin]

KOH CHIVANG, Cambodia: As night falls over his floating village, fisherman Leng Vann puffs on a cigarette and heaves a sigh for Tonle Sap, the great inland lake that has sustained Cambodia for centuries.

 

More than a million people live on or around the lake, the world's largest inland fishery, but water levels have plummeted and fish stocks dwindled because of climate change and dams upstream on the Mekong.

 

Tonle Sap was once renowned for its abundance of fish and wildlife - 43-year-old Leng Vann recalls catching hundreds of kilos a day in his nets.

 

His house, which floats on the lake, sits 5m lower than it should in mid-October, at the end of the rainy season, and when he draws his net from the waters, it is empty.

 

read more https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/cambodia-tonle-sap-lake-peril-mekong-river-dams-climate-change-13815870

[Bangyai]

Another big thank you to China.

[samuttodd]

Translation,  "The Chinese shut the water off"

[cardinalblue]

Dumb <deleted> - maybe all those years of unlimited net fishing had a consequence like no future fish...

 

it’s called resource management. Money doesn’t grow on trees and neither do fish

[Burma Bill]

Maybe a glimmer of hope (reference The Diplomat):-

 

December 14, 2020 

 

 

 

 

 

e Jinghong Dam, the southernmost of China’s cascade of 11 dams on the Lancang (Mekong) River.

 

As the Mekong River becomes the focus of renewed geopolitical rivalries, a new U.S.-funded river monitoring platform aims to shed light on controversial Chinese dam-building activities on the river’s upper reaches.

The Mekong Dam Monitor, which was officially announced on December 14, will employ remote sensing and data from cloud-piercing satellites to track water levels in China’s dams, which have been accused of withholding water from downstream nations.

[Scott Tracy]

Control. China wins. Anyone upstream of China?

 

"The Mekong Dam Monitor, which was officially announced on December 14, will employ remote sensing and data from cloud-piercing satellites to track water levels in China’s dams, which have been accused of withholding water from downstream nations."

 

 And then what? Nothing will happen, guaranteed. The next wars will be about water. Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Sudan, Ethiopia, Egypt...

 

 

[Lacessit]

The conservative modelling of the Tibetan glaciers are saying the flows from them to the Mekong and Ganges will be halved due to climate change by 2050, and that's without any Chinese intervention in the form of dams. A billion people depend on water from those two rivers.

China and India have been at loggerheads for decades, water could see them in all-out conflict.

[Moonlover]

3 hours ago, cardinalblue said:

Dumb <deleted> - maybe all those years of unlimited net fishing had a consequence like no future fish...

 

it’s called resource management. Money doesn’t grow on trees and neither do fish

No water means no fish. How difficult is that to work out?

[Dumbastheycome]

when is there  going to be  some recognition of the  fact the  human population levels and the  waste and contamination of  natural  reserve in many forms is  way out of step ?

[Pique Dard]

global warming and climate change are  serious stuff, not just rubbish according to people like trump.

[Bangyai]

On 12/22/2020 at 8:54 PM, Dumbastheycome said:

when is there  going to be  some recognition of the  fact the  human population levels and the  waste and contamination of  natural  reserve in many forms is  way out of step ?

 

When the shooting starts.