Living over Water - Restorative Redevelopment of Devastated Ecocultural Landscapes - page 233

FIGURE 14.10 ( Continued ) During the dry season, many fishing families leave the vil-
lages and go to the fishing grounds in their houseboats.
Aquatic biodiversity is also threatened. Early accounts from the nineteenth cen-
tury of the first Westerners traveling to Angkor describe fish being so abundant as
to actually hinder the passage of boats. Fishing today is big business, with large
concession areas given to wealthy businessmen at the expense of locals. Poole (2005)
considers the need for the establishment of fish sanctuaries and research on sustain-
able fishing to be far more important a concern than issues related to deforestation
since up to a half of the total animal protein intake for the entire country comes from
the Tonle Sap.
Until recently, children could be seen fishing in moats in front of temples whose
bas-reliefs (Figure 14.16) show similar species and harvest technologies being used
eight hundred years previously. Today, however, the Asian Pacific Self-Development
and Residential Association (APSARA), the organization responsible for manage-
ment of the Angkor site, has been relocating people outside the park. Poole (2005)
believes that the area could be better managed as a site of living history rather than as
a restricted-access museum of the past. Such divergent opinions are a common issue
of contention in the management of natural areas inhabited by indigenous people or
longtime residents (see chapters 5, 11, 12, 15, and 16) and are of obvious importance
to determining the future of the Iraqi marshlands.
After a month-long visit to the Tonle Sap and discussions with many development
aid providers and conservation biologists working there, my take-away opinion is
that rarely have I seen a location in more desperate need of immediate and compre-
hensively effective land-use planning on the scale and type discussed by Steinitz in
chapter 4 and applied in chapters 5 and 15. The degree and speed of rampant hotel
development in Siem Reap, much of it by foreign Asian investors, are shocking and
seemingly unregulated in terms of location and ecological footprint. In a city in