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Floating Villages Head for Higher GroundAn environmental initiative seeks to address poverty and environmental degradation—and provide hope of a brighter future for some of the world’s poorestBy Ian Fox (ifox@adb.org)
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CHONG KNEAS, CAMBODIA
Every spring, melting snows in the Himalayas spark off a remarkable chain of events in distant Cambodia that affects the livelihoods of some of the world’s poorest people.
As it leaves the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR), the mighty Mekong River crashes over the Khon Phapheng Falls, just south of the 4,000 islands of Siphandon where the width of the river spans 14 kilometers (km)—the widest it ever reaches. It then flattens abruptly and meanders for another 500 km through the plains of Cambodia to reach the delta of southern Viet Nam.
Boosted by monsoon rains and with its gradient now too flat to retain the flow within its banks, the river spills out over large parts of Cambodia, where up to 65% of cultivated land is covered each year by floodwater. The Tonle Sap River, which joins the Mekong at Phnom Penh, acts as a safety valve by absorbing part of the excess. It reverses its flow from mid-May to October, massively expanding the volume of the Tonle Sap Lake, 100 km “upstream,” close to the famed temple complex of Angkor Wat.
The lake swells from its dry season size of some 2,500 km2 to about 13,000 km 2, inundating vast areas of vegetation that serve as feeding and breeding grounds for countless varieties of fish, making the lake one of the richest areas in the world for freshwater fish. In a land as poor as Cambodia, this is a wonderful nutritional bounty, accounting for two thirds of the country’s protein.
The annual shifting of the lakeshore by some 6 km has created a highly unusual living pattern for the people in the community of Chong Kneas at the northwestern end of the lake. Some 5,000 people live on houseboats moored within the lake during the dry season and move “inland” along a narrow channel as the waters rise. Other families, who live along the road embankment beside the channel, load their houses onto the backs of trucks to seek higher ground as the water rises. The whole community settles around an isolated hill at Phnom Kraom when the lake is at its highest level.
While the floating villages are a picturesque tourist sideshow for visitors to the nearby temples, for the people who live on the boats and the peripatetic houses, this is a harsh existence. But it is one they have tolerated because of the livelihood they derive from fishing. Some members of the floating population were once farmers who fled to the lake in the 1970s when they lost their land during the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror; but others, many of Vietnamese origin, have been there much longer and have known no other life.
The houseboats and other transportable dwellings have no sanitation and waste disposal facilities, electricity, or drinking water connections. Many houseboats have cages tethered to them in which fish are fattened with the waste products from fish processing and the dwellings themselves. Some risk prosecution by fattening crocodiles in these semisubmerged wooden cages prior to smuggling them to commercial markets for their skins and meat.
Although Chong Kneas does not have a proper dock, it is the access point from the lake to the important town of Siem Reap for cargo and tourist traffic. Tourists walk along makeshift planks to board tour boats, and the movement of cargo is difficult. The site is hazardous for passengers, unhygienic for fish handling, and susceptible to oil and fuel spills.
No More Houseboats Residents say they would prefer to live on the land and have access to clean water and sanitation
The air is fetid with rotting organic detritus. Nonbiodegradable solid waste litters the shoreline and shallow waters. All kinds of liquid and solid wastes are disposed of in the water alongside the road and become trapped within the channel, which is not naturally flushed. The pollutants accumulate until the water level is sufficiently high to connect all points of the channel with the general body of water in the lake— which in turn becomes more polluted.
Environmentalists throughout the world are increasingly taking an integrated approach to environmental and poverty issues. Management of entire river basins as single unit can maximize the benefit to people without compromising the ecosystems on which future generations will depend. The Government of Cambodia established the Tonle Sap Biosphere Reserve in 2001 as a focal point for environmental management. In turn, the Tonle Sap Environmental Initiative, fostered by a consortium of multilateral and bilateral development agencies, is undertaking specific actions to address the twin problems of poverty and environmental degradation in the river basin. Chong Kneas has been identified for special attention.
Any illusions that living on boats was a cultural tradition that people cherish and wish to preserve were shattered when the villagers were consulted about their living conditions. Overwhelmingly they said that they would prefer to live on the land and have access to clean water and sanitation as well as have their children go to proper schools instead of the poorly maintained floating school.
While the status quo is clearly unacceptable, given the lack of income-earning opportunities, high levels of illness, short life expectancy, and generally arduous living conditions of the poor, environmentalists are also anxious to reduce pollution and other forms of human impacts on the lake. Both the national and regional governments also want to see Chong Kneas become a viable boat landing site, serving the commercial and tourism needs of Siem Reap and surrounding areas.
With funding from the Government of Finland, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has embarked on a yearlong technical assistance project to explore potential solutions to the unique problems of Chong Kneas. The starting point, initiated earlier this year, was to find out what the people themselves wanted. From workshops and individual visits to families on their houseboats emerged the initial clear message of a desire to move onto the land. At the same time, it is becoming equally clear that the villagers would like to continue fishing as their primary livelihood.
Chong Kneas is different: the villagers want to move
In recent years, resettlement has become one of the most controversial subjects on the development agenda. It has generally been involuntary to make way for dams and other infrastructure and, too often, in the past the unfortunately named “oustees” have not been adequately compensated or able to find comparable livelihoods in their new communities.
Chong Kneas is different in that the villagers want to move. The challenge to the Government and its international development partners is to ensure that villagers are treated equitably and, in addition to an improved physical quality of life, have equal or greater earning opportunities.
Current thinking on flooding, whether it be an annual occurrence like that of the Tonle Sap Lake, or an unpredictable result of extreme weather, is toward management rather than control.
Historically, the reverse was true. Floods have largely been considered a threat and much money has been spent building costly barriers to keep water inside river channels and out of the way of people and infrastructure. In large urban areas, there is a lot to be said for this approach. But too often these large structural barriers have made the lives of the poor harder, interfering with the ecosystems of wetlands and introducing new risks associated with failure of the high flood protection barriers themselves, often resulting in death and destruction.
At Chong Kneas, the options being considered to improve the welfare of inhabitants of floating villages are likely to involve a more modest, but practical civil engineering solution. Studies currently under way suggest that a new and wider channel should be excavated from the edge of Lake Tonle Sap to the foot of Phnom Kraom, the rocky hill that rises some 140 meters above the otherwise flat terrain. At the end of the channel, proper boat landing and cargohandling facilities with year-round access will be built to accommodate passenger and cargo boats as well as the fishing boats of the former floating villages.
All of the earth excavated for the channel and boat landing area would be used to build an extensive “platform” beside the existing hill. This could be the permanent site of the Chong Kneas community, with land allocated for houses and services such as water supply, sanitation, waste collection, electricity, schools, clinics, markets, and administrative buildings. No longer would children have to drink directly from water beside their boats— water that is a little better than untreated sewage in the dry season. Infant mortality and the high incidence of disease should be greatly reduced. Proper schooling and a host of social services previously denied to the villagers will help them live more fulfilling lives. While fishing will remain their preferred source of income, other employment opportunities associated with fish processing, the new landing facilities, and tourism will all open up to the villagers.
Over the next few months, the process of consultation with the floating villagers will intensify to ensure that they are in the driving seat in determining their future living conditions and livelihoods. It will be important that all voices are heard, especially those of the most vulnerable, such as female heads of households and the ethnic minority population of Vietnamese.
Taken together, the anticipated changes at Chong Kneas will draw the human settlement within the Tonle Sap Biosphere Reserve farther from the lake, eliminate sources of pollution and, above all, provide hope of a brighter future to some of the world’s poorest and most deprived people.
This article originally appeared in Gulf News, Dubai. It is reprinted with permission. http://www.gulfnews.com
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