Living over Water - Restorative Redevelopment of Devastated Ecocultural Landscapes - page 231

FIGURE 14.9 ( Continued ) Villages also contain shrines, community meeting rooms,
schools, recreation ball courts, small shops, markets, and local businesses such as dentists
and barbers.
The sad reality is that within Southeast Asia, Cambodia has the lowest GNP, the
least infrastructure (particularly roads), the lowest life expectancy, and the highest
rate of malnutrition (Liu and Syariffudin 2003). The situation is even bleaker when
it is recognized that the floating villages on the Tonle Sap are among the poorest
communities in the entire country (ADB 2005a). People here have little education,
few livelihood options, no private land, and ironically, despite living over water, no
access to safe drinking water. Diarrhea and other waterborne diseases due to lack of
sanitation contribute to a situation in which the Tonle Sap region has an extremely
high infant mortality rate (Poole 2005) of 124 per 1,000 live births (ADB 2005b).
The environmental integrity of the lake and its watershed is seriously compro-
mised, leading some to state that “Cambodia faces environmental disaster if the
Tonle Sap ecosystem is degraded further” (ADB 2004). Cambodia has lost one-fifth
of its forests in the last two decades due to illegal logging (Palmer and Martin 2005).
The inundated forests around the Tonle Sap are particularly vulnerable in this regard
due to their being cut for agricultural expansion (the floodplain is one of the most
productive areas in the country for growing rice) and for firewood (less than 5 per-
cent of the rural homes in the area have electricity or gas). One-half of these flood-
plain forests have been lost (Evans, Marschke, and Paudyal 2004).
Loss of forest habitat has contributed to Cambodia losing thirty-eight species of
birds since 1960 (Poole 2005). Biodiversity reduction is also related to the lingering
presence of a lucrative trade in wildlife. Egg poachers continue to threaten water-
bird populations, and the lake experiences the largest snake harvest in the world
(Bailleux 2003). Today many of the species shown on the famous Churning of the
Ocean of Milk carvings at the Bayon Temple and other Angkor ruins (Figure 14.15)
have been locally extirpated (Poole 2005).