Thursday March 14, 2024
New Dehli Times —
Climate change and upstream dams, most of them controlled by China, are threatening Cambodia’s enormous Tonle Sap Lake and its surrounding communities, putting the nation’s protein supply and the greater Mekong River ecosystem at risk.
The three-year stretch from 2019-2021 was the driest on record. The Tonle Sap’s vital flood pulse appeared to be dying, along with much of the lake’s bountiful fish stocks. Water typically flows into the Tonle Sap Lake for 120 days during the wet season, swelling it as much as six-fold before running back into the Mekong River as the rainy season ends, usually in late September. This fluctuation is the pulse.
And while the past two years have seen more rainfall, a nearly normal wet-season lake expansion and the usual reversed flow, such temporary relief cannot offset the long-term effects of a lake in crisis, experts and officials told VOA Khmer.
“The new normal is uncertainty,” said Brian Eyler, who directs the Stimson Center’s programs on Southeast Asia and energy, water and sustainability. “That the predictability of a traditional expansion happening nearly every wet season, or every monsoon season, cannot be relied upon.” The Stimson Center is in Washington.