The Fishermen of Boeng Ch'hmaar
Dry season. The rice harvest is over and a merciless sun bakes the dry soils. Clung on the back of a Chinese motorcycle, I relish the surprising cooling effect of the warm wind. For once, I don't have to drive on my own steam - and I don't even need to have guilty conscience: Even if I had tried to cycle on those man-made mud walls separating the dried-up rice paddies, I would never have been able to find the way by myself. Instead, I happily leave this job to my Cambodian driver who navigates with an impressive sense of orientation through the maze of small, bumby tracks criss-crossing the plain. We have already been driving for an hour - and it will take another hour to reach our destination.
Had I come half a year earlier, I would not be sitting on a moto - but in a boat. The vast plains we are driving on will be flooded during the end of the wet season when the waters of the distant Tonle Sap lake swallow millions of hectares of forests and arable land for a few months. During this period, the lake's surface increases fivefold, contributing rivers change their flow direction and central Cambodia is covered by the muddy waters from the Mekong. The apparent "desaster", however, brings immeasurable benefits to the region as the water is rich in nutrients and the flooded forests serve as spawning grounds for fish and a nesting place for birds. When the waters slowly retreat, the soils are more fertile and the large fish population concentrates in the smaller remaining water bodies for "harvest" - until the rain starts falling and the unique natural phenomenon starts again.
As our ride continues, the cultivated land slowly changes into shrubland, the rice fields fade out and we enter a forest of thick, high brushes. The dirt track becomes even more adventurous, with small mud lakes created by yesterday's short downpour blocking the path. Only ox carts, large tractors, military vehicles - and the motorcycles - brave this road. After a long and strenuous ride, we reach a small river where three huts indicate a boat landing. Shortly after, I find myself sitting in the intense sun on a wooden motor boat. It will take another three or four hours to reach Boeng Chhmaar, one of three core areas of the Tonle Sap Lake Biosphere Reserve. The distance involved in getting there gives me a first impression of this huge floodplain - the largest I've ever seen.
With the deafening noise of the - again - Chinese motor in the background, I watch the landscape gliding past and feel as if I was travelling to the Middle of Nowhere. But soon I realize that the quiet river I am travelling on is in use - and has most likely always been: Fishermen stand in the waters holding their nets, only their hats, eyes and noses over the surface. Every quarter hour, the boat passes a floating bamboo gate, separating fishing grounds from each other. As the river finally gives way to Boeng Chhmaar, a "sister lake" of the much larger Tonle Sap, I note several mile-long bamboo walls partitioning the lake into smaller units. I'd like to know until when this usage dates back, but for the time being, my questions must go unanswered - the lake may have been touched by locals, but definitely not by foreign visitors, so the language barrier keeps conversation to a minimum.
The boat proceeds towards a floating settlement in the center of the lake: About two dozen wooden huts, each built on a floating base of bamboo, are loosely clustered around a central landing stage. In order to deal with the annual change of Tonle Sap's water level, varying between 1 and 8 meters, the fishermen chose these mobile constructions, enabling them to move their homes and relocate villages to the flooded forests during the wet season, returning to the lake's center when the waters retreat. Floating villages on the Tonle Sap meanwhile have turned into tourist attractions, but the one on Boeng Chhmaar seems to have gone undisturbed so far. As I disembark on the central port, the day's catch has just arrived and is sorted, counted, weighed and registered. The few remaining hours of the day I watch local merchant boats arriving, visit fish drying facilities and - of course - have fish for dinner. Before I go to sleep under my mosquito net on the wooden floor, one question comes up: "Wasn't this supposed to be a core zone"?
"We are not happy with the fishing in Boeng Chmaar", Neou Bonheur states. The manager of the Tonle Sap biosphere reserve sits behind his desk in the building of the Mekong River commission in Phnom Penh and is busy answering phone calls. "After all, it is not only a designated core area, but even a Ramsar site. However, the Tonle Sap biosphere reserve is a huge project and we currently have to focus on more pressing issues." So the fishermen are going to be removed from the lake in the future? "We want to abolish fishing in the core areas." Alarm clocks are ringing: People resettlements in the name of nature conservation? Bonheur quickly pedals back: "We only want to remove commercial fishing - then there will be enough for the rest of the local people".
He takes another call and has to leave. Some question marks remain. An important ethical issue has been touched: Biosphere reserves focus on both conservation and sustainable use of natural resources - but what happens, if there is not enough for everybody? Who wants to decide how much of an area is allocated to biodiversity conservation and how much to poor rural populations to make a living? The future of Boeng Chhmaar has not been decided yet, but the signs are not promising. Large-scale dam construction projects on the Mekong and its tributaries further upstream are likely to strongly influence the river's hydrological regime. In a decade, the unique phenomenon of Tonle Sap's flooding might be drastically reduced - with almost certain repercussions on Boeng Chhmaar...
04.06.2006 13:09h
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