Cambodia's an incredible place to study the relationship between people and the ecosystem
because it goes back so far, the history of people here.
If you go to the Angkor Wat Temples,
there are magnificent bal relief friezes that depict the importance of fish in the life
of people here.
Certainly people's dependence on the fish and the rice has been there for millennium.
The TonlÈ Sap Lake is really the lifeblood of the people here and the food production,
and what's really important is the timing and the amount of rains that come into the
system each year,
which floods the terrestrial system and provides a huge pulse of nutrients to the fish community
that supports the entire food web.
The lake is the source of at least 350,000 metric tons of fish a year.
That makes it easily the most productive inland fishery on the planet Earth.
So the system is really in jeopardy right now and that's for a number of reasons.
One of those is because dams are being planned and being built on the rivers that feed into
the lake.
Other impacts include agricultural changes in the flood plain and deforestation.
Layer on top of that climate change,
and you have, essentially, an environmental train wreck.
In order to address some of these very challenging problems,
Boston University is co-leading an effort that involves about 15 principals
from Conservation International, universities in France, of course Cambodia, and Canada,
and we're trying to, for really one of the first times,
pull together everything we know about the economics of the system, about its biology
and physics,
and about the society and culture,
particularly issues related to human health and food security,
put all that information together and create scenarios, models,
that allow us to project possible futures under different forces of policy.
While we're in Cambodia, we also want to go to the local fish market,
see what species are coming through,
how they're processed,
who they're sold to, and that really informs the construction of the model.
I can see what people are catching, and from those species I can guess how they're catching
them,
and to some extent where,
and it teaches me something about the clock of the lake,
and that will prove useful in understanding the food web pathways.
And, of all the people involved, the ones of particular interest to us
are the one and a half or two million people who depend utterly on TonlÈ Sap for their
daily existence,
living on the floor of the lake when it's dry,
and floating on the surface of its waters when they're high.
How these people are going to maintain subsistence in the face of all of these immense changes
in their environment
is a question that is still unanswered
and really deserves the attention of a concerted, well-organized team.
I think we have the opportunity to give people options.
We need to develop those relationships and ensure that we put the information in the
decision makers' hands.
We're not the decision makers, they are.
I'm thinking that our approach is going to work.
I'm feeling more optimistic.
We're not going to make the world perfect,
but I really do think we're going to develop some insights into how people can survive,
how they can adapt, and also how Cambodia can manage not to lose
its enormous biological legacy.