For Milennia, Tonle Sap Fed Cambodia; Now, Thanks To Dams, Warming & Poaching, It's Totally Fucked

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Tonle Sap Lake is the largest body of freshwater in Southeast Asia. Its wetlands support critically endangered species like the Bengal florican; its sediment provides nutrients for croplands; its fisheries are among the largest and most biodiverse in the world. And it has reached a tipping point. Just three years after the 2016 drought, another hit the region earlier this year. Local and global leaders should agree to stem the mushrooming of environmentally destructive hydropower dams, combat illegal fishing and mitigate the impacts of global warming. If such action is not taken soon, the Tonle Sap’s days are numbered. With it will vanish an ecosystem that has supported millions of Cambodians and their neighbors for centuries.

Like the Mekong River as a whole, Tonle Sap Lake is beset by problems both local and global. In recent years, a trifecta of climate change, overfishing and the creation of new dams has threatened to unmake the Tonle Sap. Fishers have begged the Cambodian government to crack down on the large-scale illegal fishing that takes place inside the lake’s protected areas. Environmental campaigners have urged a moratorium on the megadams dotting the Mekong and its tributaries. Researchers have suggested investment in energy alternatives such as floating solar panels. In December, the 2019 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will convene in Santiago, Chile; if the concept of a changing climate remains a theoretical in the minds of some Western leaders, it is very much a lived experience on the Tonle Sap.

The lake is fed by an extraordinary hydrological phenomenon called a monotonal flood-pulsed system. A tributary known as the Tonle Sap River stretches from the Mekong to the Tonle Sap Lake, reversing course twice a year to fill and empty the lake. In the rainy season, water surges up into the lake, which expands as much as six times its dry-season size, covering 6,000 square miles. In the dry season, water flows back out of the lake and into the Mekong.

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Mekong governments have long insisted that hydropower was necessary to provide electricity to their rapidly developing economies. On the upper Mekong, or Lancang, as it is known in China, megadams dot the river and its tributaries, delivering electricity but blocking sediment and, increasingly during drought years, water from moving downstream. On the lower Mekong, which runs through Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, each nation has embarked on its own dam-building frenzy.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/30/opinion/tonle-sap-cambodia-climate.html