Living over Water - Restorative Redevelopment of Devastated Ecocultural Landscapes - page 249

about “security issues.” The Prek Toal Core Area came up with an ingenious way
to defuse what might have become a severely limiting problem (Evans, Marschke,
and Paudyal 2005). Local military commanders “concerned” about the security of
tourists visiting the area proposed putting an armed guard on every boat for every
trip, for which the soldier would, of course, be compensated. Because there have
never been any security issues in the area, the statement was a thinly veiled threat
disguising the fact that the military simply wanted their share of the $15-20 entrance
fee that tourists have to pay. To the managers of the core area, the revenue loss was
secondary to the unwanted presence of AK-47-toting uniformed guards on a boat
with tourists who were going bird watching. The solution was to turn the problem
into a conservation asset. A counterproposal was made that one officer from each
military unit would join the conservation team and be paid the same rate as the other
rangers. The core area management team also insisted on the following provisos: that
the Environmental Station would select the officers from lake communities, and that
the recruited officers must undertake the training and perform all tasks assigned to
rangers. The benefits to conservation were that now the armed officers, who have a
law enforcement authority, can be part of the management of the area and arrest any
poachers they might come across (Evans, Marschke, and Paudyal 2005).
If the rampant development of Siem Reap is the first thing that strikes the envi-
ronmentally minded tourist to the Tonle Sap, the rich assemblage of NGOs and
other charity-related groups is a close second. Osmose, with a mandate of linking
community-based conservation with ecotourism and community education, orga-
nizes tours to Prek Toal as well as educates villagers, turning one-time poachers into
future rangers. They are housed in the same building as the Sam Veasna Center for
Wildlife Conservation, an organization that promotes local wildlife conservation for
both locals and foreigners. Another group, the Angkor Centre for Conservation of
Biodiversity, runs a visitor center that rehabilitates animals rescued from the illegal
wildlife trade and educates about biodiversity conservation (Figure 14.20). Krousar
Thmy is a foundation that looks after deprived children and attempts to revive
Cambodia's lost traditions; it runs the Tonle Sap Exhibition, an information center
about people and the lake (Figure 14.21).
Development, in its widest definition, aims at improving standards of living. Many
have criticized the superficiality of measuring developmental success with only eco-
nomic yardsticks. Indeed, monetary wealth is only a small part of societal well-
being (Abbott 2008, 2009), which is found in other benchmarks, including social and
environmental health (Abbott 2005), education, security, and even the availability of
recreational facilities (Adams 2005). Nevertheless, development cannot be divorced
from financial considerations. It is not so much a matter of greed or misplaced priori-
ties, but rather that economic wealth is often believed to be the surest guarantee of
freedom and choice, as well as the ability to obtain other less tangible but more sig-
nificant goals. Developing countries are at a disadvantage in that they are relegated to
perpetually playing catch-up in terms of learning new technologies and knowledge
constantly upgraded by other more developed countries. The benefit of not having
experienced rampant industrialization, however, is that these countries have not been
so quickly swept into the arena of globalization. As such, they have been able to
maintain their unique geography and culture that are so attractive to tourists from