Ph.D. Candidate
Mr MAK Sithirith

Political Geography And Ecology: Poltics Of Resource Management In The Tonle Sap Lake, Cambodia

Given the richness in fisheries, the Tonle Sap had been territorialized into commercial fishing areas, public fishing areas and conservation areas since the French Protectorate Regime. After a century under the territorial system, the resources in the Tonle Sap are under threat from poor governance and population pressures in which conflict over the access to resource is escalated.

This thesis seeks broadly to understand the politics of resource management in Tonle Sap. In understanding this politics, my research is focused on three main objectives.

First, I seek to analyse the territoriality of the Tonle Sap and examine how the territoriality implicates the resource management in the Tonle Sap. Second, I intend to examine the ways in which resources in each territorial zone is being used, managed and distributed. More specifically, I intend to analyze the resource uses, resource management and resource distribution in relation to power of state actors and non-state actors. Third, I seek to understand how local resource dependent community organizes their local politics to cope with the powerful actors in protection of their livelihoods under the situation of resource scarcity.

In analyzing the politics of resource management, I have selected three sites in the Tonle Sap for field investigation. First, Peam Bang is a floating community in the Tonle Sap with a complex territorial system of fishing lot area overlapping Biosphere Reserve Areas.

The community is home to both small scale and medium scale fishers competing access to contested fishing area. Second, Anlong Raing is another floating village, but also mobile located in an area between the fishing lot and fish sanctuary. It is interesting to learn how the Vietnamese and the Khmer live together to organize community fisheries. Third, Kampong Phluk is stand-stilt community where villagers are engaged in fishing but supplemented by some farming activities.