Struggling to make a living in the lower Mekong River

Cambodia Stung Treng flooded forest in the lower Mekong used to provide a livelihood for many fishermen, before fish stocks declined severely.

Tha Sara, a 34-year-old widow of three, begins her washing routine from a small boat loaded with clothes. Sara’s two young children stand on the shore, looking toward their mother’s boat, moored near the Mekong River in Veun Sein village, Stung Treng province, northeastern Cambodia.

Her husband died in 2019, leaving behind a $5,000 debt he had borrowed to make ends meet. This is a huge debt for working-class people like Sara’s family, who earn only $200 a month.

The debt burden forced Sara to leave her children and work as a maid in Saudi Arabia. After two years, Sara had almost paid off her debt and saved some money.

She had planned to work in Saudi Arabia for longer. But in May 2022, relatives in Cambodia texted her that her daughters were seriously ill and they refused to help her care for them any longer.

"Because my landlord didn't want me to go back, they didn't buy me a plane ticket," she said. Sara had to spend most of her savings, about $2,000, to buy a ticket back to Cambodia.

On her return journey, Sara had trouble with her plane ticket in Thailand, her final destination, which cost her an additional $500. When she arrived in Cambodia, she had just enough money left to buy a motorbike and return to her previous life of struggling to make ends meet.

Tha Sara washes clothes on the Mekong River in Veun Sein village, Stung Treng province, northeastern Cambodia. Photo: SCMP

Sara is not the only person in Veun Sein village who has to go abroad to work. Many people also go to other areas of the country to find work.

Village chief Si Chandorn said that of the 20 villagers who left last year, 18 were women. They often worked in hotels, hair salons, as domestic helpers or as market vendors.

Ms Chandorn, 63, said the trend began in 2017, when employment opportunities in the area were limited and fish stocks were depleted. Before, the situation was not so difficult.

"Veun Sien used to have a lot of fish because of the flooded forest," she said.

Stung Treng Wetland Forest, located along the Mekong River, north of Stung Treng town, has been a hub of biodiversity for many years. Designated a wetland of international importance under the UNESCO Ramsar Convention in 1999, the forest is home to many endangered species of birds and fish. Spanning an area of 14,600 hectares, it is also a destination for hundreds of migratory fish species as they swim upstream during the breeding season.

As of 2021, more than 15,000 people live in 20 villages around the Stung Treng flooded forest, with fishing as their main occupation. However, many villagers have had to abandon this profession as fish stocks in the flooded forest have seriously declined.

Ian Baird, a geography professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US, who lived in the area in the 1990s and has close ties with local communities, returned in May 2022 to find out why the flooded forest in Stung Treng is dying.

Baird blames the phenomenon on a series of large dams built on the Mekong mainstream and its tributaries. The hydroelectric dams hold back water in large reservoirs during the rainy season and release it during the dry season to generate electricity.

The release of water during the dry season causes the mangrove forests to be flooded year-round, instead of just during the rainy season as is typical. Meanwhile, the endemic tree species in this mangrove forest have adapted to the rising and falling water seasons for thousands of years.

When the Mekong River rises during the rainy season, usually from May to October, these plants are submerged. When the water recedes during the dry season, they thrive and grow.

But villagers in Stung Treng say that since the mid-2000s, when hydroelectric dams were built upstream, the river has not drained during the dry season, leaving trees in the flooded forest without the time they need to grow. They rot and die en masse.

Baird found that about 50% of the tall trees in the flooded forest had dried up. Without intervention, the entire forest could be wiped out in the future.

There are more than 150 hydropower dams along the Mekong River and its tributaries, including 13 on the mainstream. Baird analyzed water levels in the region during the dry season and found that water levels in Pakse, southern Laos and the closest point to the Stung Treng forest, have risen over the past 15 years.

“The damage is not only done to the flooded forest but also to the aquatic species that live there. Some species have even disappeared completely,” said Professor Baird, citing a recent International Union for Conservation of Nature report on the Stung Treng flooded forest. “This has also had a major impact on fisheries.”

The destruction of forests also accelerated the erosion of floodplains, causing many agricultural lands to disappear.

The Mekong River Commission (MRC), an intergovernmental body that oversees the development of the Mekong River comprising Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, acknowledged a "slight increase" in water levels in Pakse, saying this could be the result of multiple factors including climate change, water releases from reservoirs and changes in land use.

"We are working with the four member countries, China and Myanmar on the 'Limits of Permissible Change in the Lower Mekong Wetlands' project, in which we are trying to assess the minimum and maximum flows during the wet and dry seasons," the MRC statement said.

Chhoun Chhorn, deputy director of the provincial environment department that manages the Stung Treng area, confirmed that they have not taken any measures to protect the flooded forest.

"We have raised the issue on television and with relevant parties to call for funding and budget contributions for forest restoration, but so far there have been no results," he said.

At the MRC International Conference in Vientiane, Laos in April, host country officials stressed the need for decisive action to address growing challenges to water security in the lower Mekong River.

“The situation is expected to get worse if we continue as it is,” Bounkham Vorachit, Laos’s Minister of Natural Resources and Environment, told the conference. She called on stakeholders to focus on the livelihoods of the poorest and most vulnerable people along the Mekong River.

Mr. Hao Zhao, secretary-general of the Lancang-Mekong Water Center (LMC), said that the center will coordinate closely, "shoulder to shoulder" with the MRC to obtain "real scientific data" related to the Mekong River, in order to "avoid misinterpretations".

Dead trees in a flooded forest on the Mekong River in Stung Treng province. Photo: SCMP

In Veun Sein village, Sara sees no prospects for development, with dwindling fish stocks and the flooded forest gradually being destroyed. “Life before I left and after I returned has not changed at all. We still have no income,” she said.

Sara hopes to open a shop on the main road in the future. But to make her dream come true, she needs money, which is hard to come by in the village.

"When my daughter gets married, I want to go abroad to work again. This time I won't go to Saudi Arabia, but to Malaysia because it's closer. Saudi Arabia is too far away," Sara said.

Thanh Tam (According to SCMP )

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