In Cambodia, a Battered Mekong Defies Doomsday Predictions

Amongst them is a brand new government-backed proposal that seeks to show a very bio-rich stretch of the river in northern Cambodia right into a UNESCO World Heritage Web site. Such a designation, reserved for websites of nice scientific or cultural significance, means this a part of the river ought to, at the least on paper, get pleasure from safety from varied types of growth, together with dam constructing. And so some conservationists at the moment are providing a extra hopeful, if cautious, message: that with higher decision-making and administration, the river might proceed to ship the bounty of pure assets it has for millennia.

“The Mekong will not be useless,” says Sudeep Chandra, director of the World Water Heart on the College of Nevada, Reno, who leads the USAID-funded Wonders of the Mekong analysis mission. “We’ve seen big environmental pressures inflicting the Mekong to dry up and fisheries to virtually collapse. And but we additionally see the unbelievable resilience of this river within the face of these threats.”

Originating within the Tibetan highlands and winding its means by way of six international locations earlier than disgorging into the South China Sea, the two,700-mile-long Mekong River is house to the world’s largest inland fishery, with about 1,000 species of fish. Most of the 70 million individuals dwelling within the basin depend on the river for his or her livelihoods, whether or not that’s farming, fishing, or different occupations. “A case could possibly be made that the Mekong is the world’s most essential river,” says Chandra.

The river’s extraordinary productiveness is linked to an enormous flood pulse that, within the moist season, can increase water ranges 40 toes. With the rise comes sediment that’s important to agriculture in addition to huge numbers of younger fish, that are swept into Cambodia’s important Tonle Sap Lake and different floodplains the place they feed and develop.

However the river’s pure stream regime has been more and more disrupted by dams, particularly people who China started constructing within the early Nineties within the Higher Mekong and which the nation has operated with little regard for downstream impacts. A subsequent frenzy of dam constructing in Laos and elsewhere, totally on tributaries to the Mekong, has drastically exacerbated the issue, with dams blocking fish from finishing their pure migrations. Already beneath excessive stress from overfishing, some fish populations have plummeted, particularly massive species just like the critically endangered Mekong large catfish, which may develop to 10 toes in size and greater than 600 kilos, however is now on the point of extinction.

With local weather change intensifying, monsoon rains have turn out to be extra unpredictable. Throughout droughts in 2019 and 2020, the stream of water from the Mekong into Tonle Sap, the biggest lake in Southeast Asia, dried up, and dam operators made issues worse by holding again a lot of their impounded water for their very own financial good points. Consequently, mass deaths of fish as a consequence of shallow and oxygen-poor water had been reported within the lake, and most of the a whole lot of 1000’s of fishers working on the lake had been pressured to desert their work.

On the Tonle Sap River, which connects the Mekong and the lake, two thirds of the 60-something industrial “dai” operators working stationary nets, which in years previous might every catch a number of tons of fish in simply an hour, needed to shut down. “The state of affairs grew to become so dire there have been considerations these fisheries might now not be sustained,” says Peng Bun Ngor, a fish ecologist and dean of the school of fisheries science at Cambodia’s Royal College of Agriculture in Phnom Penh. That might be a disaster for Cambodians, whose per capita fish consumption is greater than that of some other individuals on this planet.

Nevertheless, the river system caught a break with the newest monsoon season, which runs roughly from June to November, delivering higher than common rainfall to the decrease basin and the Tonle Sap Lake area. Though China continued to carry again water to counter its persisting drought, water ranges in Tonle Sap rose multiple meter above recent-year averages. With the lake increasing into seasonally flooded forests, which give glorious feeding grounds for fish, fish populations seem to have been boosted. “General we’re seeing extra fish being caught, with a higher variety of species and bigger sizes of particular person fish,” says Ngor.

On a latest go to to the lake, Ngor observed a rise in medium- and large-size carps, together with Jullien’s golden carp, often known as the isok barb, a critically endangered species. There have been spottings of different uncommon fish too, just like the Laotian shad and clown featherback, together with will increase of extra widespread fish, just like the climbing perch and snakehead. A number of wallagos, a catfish that may develop as much as 8 toes lengthy, could possibly be seen leaping from the open water.

On the dai fishery, 13,000 metric tons of fish had been caught final yr, up 30 % from the yr earlier than. “We’re seeing fish come again if situations enhance,” says Heng Kong, director of the Inland Fisheries Analysis and Improvement Institute of the Cambodian Fisheries Administration in Phnom Penh.

A crackdown by authorities on the usage of unlawful fishing strategies within the lake, equivalent to trawling and electrofishing, has additionally alleviated stress on fish populations, specialists say. The marketing campaign adopted a speech final yr by Cambodia’s long-serving Prime Minister, Hun Sen, wherein he excoriated provincial officers for failing to deal with unlawful fishing. However the crackdown has additionally come beneath robust criticism. Ostensibly focused at larger-scale industrial fishers, it has resulted within the prosecution of small-scale fishers, particularly these of Vietnamese origin, for minor infractions. Many of those fishers, who’ve lived on and across the lake for many years, have reportedly needed to flee.

Enforcement points apart, conservationists fear that ecological enhancements could possibly be momentary if extra dams are constructed: the drive by Laos to quickly develop its hydropower sector reveals few indicators of slowing down. Preliminary development on a dam close to Luang Prabang, on the primary stem of the Mekong, is underway. Laos already has two dams on the Mekong itself.

Many hydropower tasks, in Laos and elsewhere, are pushed by political or non-public pursuits and barely bear in mind environmental prices, observers say. One instance is a small dam being deliberate in Laos close to the Cambodian border, on the Sekong River, an essential Mekong tributary that has till now remained the one massive free-flowing tributary within the basin.

Often called Sekong A, the dam is being constructed by a state-owned Vietnamese firm, however the mission is shrouded in secrecy. No formal development contract has been put in place. “It’s primarily being constructed illegally,” says Brian Eyler, who screens dam developments within the Mekong as director of the Southeast Asia program on the Stimson Heart in Washington, D.C.

Whereas the dam is predicted to supply solely a tiny fraction of the area’s energy provide, research present it can have a robust detrimental affect on fish abundance and variety within the Sekong, in addition to alter water high quality and additional lower the quantity of sediment and vitamins that attain the Mekong. “It’s an ideal instance of a high-cost, low-benefit mission,” says Eyler.

Cambodia, for its half, has begun to rethink its personal dam developments. A big dam it accomplished in 2019 on one other main Mekong tributary, the Sesan River, has confirmed a expensive failure, with lower-than-expected power manufacturing and disastrous environmental impacts. Plans for 2 massive dams alongside the Mekong mainstem within the northern a part of the nation seem to have been shelved, at the least for now. As an alternative, the federal government has proposed that the roughly 100-mile stretch of river the place the dams can be constructed be designated a UNESCO World Heritage Web site in recognition of its ecological significance and organic richness.

This part of the river, which flows leisurely previous sandbanks and islands lined in seasonally flooded forest, has traditionally spawned as much as 200 billion fish every year, and its many deep swimming pools, a few of which attain a depth of 260 toes, are believed to be refuges for huge fish, together with the large freshwater stingray.

Final yr, fishers right here caught a stingray weighing 661 kilos, which Guinness World Information verified as the biggest freshwater fish species ever recorded. The stingray was tagged and launched by a group of U.S. and Cambodian scientists as a part of a first-ever regional telemetry research, which goals to study extra about fish actions and habits.

The World Heritage Web site proposal has additionally been described as a last-ditch effort to guard the Mekong’s remaining inhabitants of Irrawaddy River dolphins. Whereas the final particular person of a small dolphin group that lived on the Cambodia-Laos border died on the finish of final yr, a inhabitants of fewer than 100 people stays within the deep swimming pools of Kampi, positioned towards the southern finish of the river part proposed for cover. The swimming pools are additionally a well-liked vacationer vacation spot.

“The dolphins symbolize the organic significance of the Mekong River, and this designation would considerably entice the eye of all of the stakeholders involved with defending the Mekong River and its aquatic biodiversity,” says Somany Phay, a senior conservation officer with the World Wildlife Fund who additionally holds a senior place with the Cambodian Fisheries Administration.

There are indicators that outreach efforts encouraging fishers to guard critically endangered fish are producing outcomes. Earlier this yr, fishers caught a Mekong large catfish weighing greater than 200 kilos within the Mekong River in Kang Meas district. Not one of the fishers within the group had ever seen such an enormous catfish earlier than. However relatively than killing it and promoting the meat for a sizeable revenue, they determined to launch it in a particular ceremony, wherein the fish was sprinkled with flowers and fragrance earlier than it was let go. “We knew this was a really particular fish and it will be dangerous luck to kill it,” says one of many fishers, Thou Theary.

Big fish are sometimes thought of good indicators of river well being, so the seize of the grownup large catfish in Kang Meas despatched a optimistic sign in regards to the Mekong’s future. “Folks have been saying that the Mekong is so degraded that it can’t be fastened, however this isn’t true,” says Chea Seila, the Cambodian program supervisor for the Wonders of the Mekong mission. “The Mekong River nonetheless flows, and the fish are nonetheless plentiful.”