Asakiyume mita

Tonle Sap is a lake in Cambodia that expands and contracts dramatically, depending on whether it's the rainy season or the dry season--it goes from being no more than a meter deep and 2,700 square kilometers in area to being 9 meters deep and 16,000 square kilometers in area (says Wikipedia). The floating villages of Siem Reap, on one of its feeder rivers, are well known, but on the lake itself there are also floating villages. When dudeshoes saw this New York Times article ("A Push to Save Cambodia's Tonle Sap Lake," by Chris Berdik), about how the lake was threatened, she sent me the link, knowing I'd be interested.


Girl from the floating village of Akol, Cambodia. Photo by Chris Berdik for the New York Times

The article is largely about the creation of a model to try to predict what will happen to the lake and how much influence the various factors have, and about the problems in designing the model, and with the model more generally. I was more interested, though, in other aspects of the story--in the fact that farmers displaced by grants to agribusiness have come to make a living on the lake, in the mysterious statement that "tropical dams typically generate power for just a few decades" (why is that?), in the fact that there are tiny fish there called money fish, and sharks that will fit in the palm of your hand.


The black shark, Labeo chrysophekadion. Photo by Chris Berdik for the New York Times

1.5 million people depend on the Tonle Sap. Climate change, hydro dams, increased population pressures--all these things spell change for the lake. Since change is coming, it's best to be planning for it:

A food-security expert, Dr. Fraser has studied some of history’s worst famines, as well as those prevented by tactics like stockpiling food and distributing drought-resistant seeds. His research suggests that no matter how the Tonle Sap changes in the coming years, the right adaptive strategies could mean the difference between a tolerable transition and a disaster.

“The policy and development challenge is one of managing the transition,” he said. “There’s no way to stop it.”