Cambodia’s giant life-giving Tonle Sap lake in peril
As night falls over his floating village, fisherman Leng Vann puffs on a cigarette and heaves a sigh for Tonle Sap, the great inland lake that has sustained Cambodia for centuries.
More than a million people live on or around the lake, the world’s largest inland fishery, but water levels have plummeted and fish stocks dwindled because of climate change and dams upstream on the Mekong.
Tonle Sap was once renowned for its abundance of fish and wildlife — 43-year-old Leng Vann recalls catching hundreds of kilos a day in his nets.
His house, which floats on the lake, sits five metres lower than it should in mid-October, at the end of the rainy season, and when he draws his net from the waters, it is empty.
AFP
