Farmers and Fishermen See Climate Change Worries

In the Kampong Phluk fishing village on the Tonle Sap lake, home to thousands of families in Siem Reap province, fishermen say their catch this year has been too poor to live on. Rising temperatures and drought have shrunk the size of the lake, and the size of the catch. Ker Chhorn, a 46-year-old fisherman on the lake, has 10 children to support. His daily catch is somewhere around 70 kilograms a day, he told VOA Khmer. That’s down from last year by tenfold. He typically catches 700 kilograms per day. He blames the warm weather, which keeps the fish deeper under water and hidden in the mangroves. This is other signals of a changing climate have the country’s fishermen and farmers worried. (Sok Khemara and Neou Vannarin report from Siem Reap)