For farmers in the area, there’s little hope for this year’s dry-season rice harvest. They irrigate in desperation, but they can already see there won’t be enough water. They are bracing to write off their crops, fall deeper into debt, and maybe lose their land, several said this week.
For less than two weeks, hundreds of people will cram into markets now sprouting on the banks of the Tonle Sap, chopping and raking fish heads, heaving and weighing large baskets of small fish, and haggling over prices every step of the way.
Amid record-low water levels, Cham fishing families fear they will need to finally leave Phnom Penh behind, with local authorities threatening their eviction to make way for a private development, and a search for new shores nearby coming up empty.
As the Tonle Sap ecosystem is strained by hydropower dams, drought and unprecedented forest fires, the flooded forests, people who rely on them, and the forests’ carbon-capturing potential face increasing threats.
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