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Fish Stocks Depleting in Cambodia’s Troubled Tonlé Sap Lake
Fishermen at work on Tonlé Sap lake, Cambodia. All photos: Sam Jones
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The Tonle Sap, translated as the “Great Lake” and often referred to as “Cambodia’s beating heart”, is the largest freshwater body in the region and one of the world’s most productive freshwater fisheries.
It’s so productive, in fact, that the estimated quantity of fish caught in the Tonle Sap each year is greater than the entire recreational and commercial freshwater fishing industries of both Canada and the US combined.
The fish from the lake constitute the primary source of protein for the majority of Cambodians. As Taber Hand, founder of the non-profit organization Wetlands Work! said of the Tonle Sap, “it’s a food factory – and you don’t have to pay to plant the fish”.
Despite the creation of a 200-hectare conservation area, fishing communities on south-east Asia’s largest freshwater lake fear their way of life is slipping away.
Out past the floating villages, the day-trippers and the mangrove arcades, the brown waters of the Tahas river open into a vast, dull green lake fringed by forest and a seemingly endless horizon.
Silhouetted by a sinking afternoon sun, distant figures fish from small boats under a blue sky streaked with low cloud. It is the kind of weather that both tourists and Savon Pen prefer.
“Sometimes you look up at the sky and it’s gloomy and I worry that the boat will capsize,” says the 42-year-old fisher-woman.
“The wind blows them over and when the boats sink, they go straight to the bottom of the water. Every year, people die.” Over the past few months, two people from her community have drowned.
Savon Pen, 42, a fisherwoman from Kampong Phluk commune
Tonlé Sap lake is many things to many people: a Unesco biosphere reserve since 1997; a wetland that supports the livelihoods of more than 1.2 million people; a tourist attraction; and the source of more than a third of all the protein eaten by Cambodia’s 15 million people. In the rainy season, its area can swell from about 2,700 sq km to 16,000 sq km.
But to Savon Pen, the largest freshwater lake in south-east Asia is a treacherous but necessary workplace, one on which she and her husband depend to survive and to feed their six children. A good day’s work – which means spending 14 hours on the water to reach the far grounds where the fish are biggest – will net them between $8 (£5.30) and $16. From that, they will have to provide for their children, buy fuel and maintain the boat.
“It’s very difficult because if we don’t catch fish, we can’t put food on the table for our children,” she says. “There are times when I have to take the risk and go out even though I know it’s dangerous.”
Until three years ago, life around the lake was very different. Before then, much of the fishing was divided up into government-approved lots worked by commercial vessels, leaving many local people excluded. In March 2012, the Cambodian prime minister, Hun Sen, ordered an end to the lots and opened up the waters to those living along its shores.
Although the move was well received by local communities, it has raised fears that unrestricted access could destroy fish stocks. In a bid to safeguard the lake’s population and diversity, an EU-funded programme has established a 200-hectare (494-acre) fish conservation area (FCA) close to the Kampong Phluk commune, which is home to nearly 3,900 people.
A boat chugs through Kampong Phluk commune, close to Tonlé Sap lake
According to the local community fisheries, the FCA is paying dividends: its deputy chief claims that only 1% of the fishing in the area is illegal, compared with 30% across the whole commune.
But despite its success, some local fisherfolk worry it may be too little, too late. Vey Kuang, who has lived in Kampong Phluk for all of her 54 years, says the fish population has dwindled drastically over the past 30 years.
“When I was 18 or 19, there were a lot more fish than there are today,” she says.
“Back then, if we wanted to go fishing, four of us could catch the fish with our bare hands. There were a lot of tree branches in the water then to attract fish, but they have all gone now, so the fish population has decreased and some species are no longer found.”
Vey Kuang, 54, who has lived and fished at Tonlé Sap lake all her life
The forests surrounding the lake have been denuded for decades because people rely on wood and charcoal for fuel, but Vey Kuang believes that climate change is also affecting the seasons and the fish.
“The weather is getting hotter and now even the rainy season is as hot as the dry season,” she says. “November is meant to be a cool month but this year, it’s hot.”
Ning Nee, the community’s commerce chief, agrees: “We have seen an increase in heat. It’s hotter now and we are urging people to plant trees.”
Vey Kuang has noticed other signs of climate change. She points to the water below the stern of the boat she is sitting on and says her mother has told her that, in her lifetime, the level of the lake has never been so low. What’s more, she adds, the lake has started to smell, which shouldn’t happen given the fresh downpours of the rainy season.
“I hope the fish conservation area will help,” she says. “But I am very worried about how things will be for my grandchildren. If there are no more fish, we’ll have to send people from the community to the city and then the young people will go and we, the old people, will be left here selling fish and vegetables.”
Others in the community are more ambivalent about the changing times and are eyeing ecotourism as a way to increase their income. Many already supplement their fishing activities by rowing tourists around their stilted houses and out into the lake.
Even the most vulnerable people in the village – single women without boats of their own – can earn a couple of dollars through the rotational scheme. Tourists are charged $5 for a small boat, of which $2 goes to the boat owner, $2 to the rower and $1 back to the community to fund conservation efforts.
A fishing boat in Kampong Phluk commune
Savon Pen is delighted at the extra income and unfazed by the tourists who cruise the river and study its people and wildlife through a camera lens.
“I’m very happy to have my picture taken,” she says. “I hope they will share the pictures and then more people will come.”
Although some of her neighbors fear that the changing weather could soon bring an end to a way of life that has endured for generations, and disperse families and communities, Savon Pen is resolutely unsentimental about the future.
“If I could choose, I would quit fishing and do tourism. Tourism isn’t difficult – fishing is,” she says.
“I’d like to live in a town because I’ve been there and I’ve seen that people there can support themselves in different ways and have time to celebrate holidays with their families.”
By Sam Jones
Sam Jones is a reporter for the Guardian. He is currently on a secondment on Global development
News
Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue
Google is so closely associated with its key product that its name is a verb that signifies “search.” However, Google’s dominance in that sector is dwindling.
According to eMarketer, Google will lose control of the US search industry for the first time in decades next year.
Google will remain the dominant search player, accounting for 48% of American search advertising revenue. And, remarkably, Google is still increasing its sales in the field, despite being the dominating player in search since the early days of the George W. Bush administration. However, Amazon is growing at a quicker rate.
Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding
Amazon will hold over a quarter of US search ad dollars next year, rising to 27% by 2026, while Google will fall even more, according to eMarketer.
The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the forecast.
Lest you think you’ll have to switch to Bing or Yahoo, this isn’t the end of Google or anything really near.
Google is the fourth-most valued public firm in the world. Its market worth is $2.1 trillion, trailing just Apple, Microsoft, and the AI chip darling Nvidia. It also maintains its dominance in other industries, such as display advertisements, where it dominates alongside Facebook’s parent firm Meta, and video ads on YouTube.
To put those “other” firms in context, each is worth more than Delta Air Lines’ total market value. So, yeah, Google is not going anywhere.
Nonetheless, Google faces numerous dangers to its operations, particularly from antitrust regulators.
On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Google must open up its Google Play Store to competitors, dealing a significant blow to the firm in its long-running battle with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Google announced that it would appeal the verdict.
In August, a federal judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search. That verdict could lead to the dissolution of the company’s search operation. Another antitrust lawsuit filed last month accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the online advertising business.
Meanwhile, European regulators have compelled Google to follow tough new standards, which have resulted in multiple $1 billion-plus fines.
Pixa Bay
Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding
On top of that, the marketplace is becoming more difficult on its own.
TikTok, the fastest-growing social network, is expanding into the search market. And Amazon has accomplished something few other digital titans have done to date: it has established a habit.
When you want to buy anything, you usually go to Amazon, not Google. Amazon then buys adverts to push companies’ products to the top of your search results, increasing sales and earning Amazon a greater portion of the revenue. According to eMarketer, it is expected to generate $27.8 billion in search revenue in the United States next year, trailing only Google’s $62.9 billion total.
And then there’s AI, the technology that (supposedly) will change everything.
Why search in stilted language for “kendall jenner why bad bunny breakup” or “police moving violation driver rights no stop sign” when you can just ask OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “What’s going on with Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny?” in “I need help fighting a moving violation involving a stop sign that wasn’t visible.” Google is working on exactly this technology with its Gemini product, but its success is far from guaranteed, especially with Apple collaborating with OpenAI and other businesses rapidly joining the market.
A Google spokeswoman referred to a blog post from last week in which the company unveiled ads in its AI overviews (the AI-generated text that appears at the top of search results). It’s Google’s way of expressing its ability to profit on a changing marketplace while retaining its business, even as its consumers steadily transition to ask-and-answer AI and away from search.
Google has long used a single catchphrase to defend itself against opponents who claim it is a monopoly abusing its power: competition is only a click away. Until recently, that seemed comically obtuse. Really? We are going to switch to Bing? Or Duck Duck Go? Give me a break.
But today, it feels more like reality.
Google is in no danger of disappearing. However, every highly dominating company faces some type of reckoning over time. GE, a Dow mainstay for more than a century, was broken up last year and is now a shell of its previous dominance. Sears declared bankruptcy in 2022 and is virtually out of business. US Steel, long the foundation of American manufacturing, is attempting to sell itself to a Japanese corporation.
SOURCE | CNN
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2024 | Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case
Washington — Trump Media, The Supreme Court announced Monday that it will not hear an appeal from social media platform X about a search warrant acquired by prosecutors in the election meddling case against former President Donald Trump.
The justices did not explain their rationale, and there were no recorded dissents.
The firm, which was known as Twitter before being purchased by billionaire Elon Musk, claims a nondisclosure order that prevented it from informing Trump about the warrant obtained by special counsel Jack Smith’s team violated its First Amendment rights.
The business also claims Trump should have had an opportunity to exercise executive privilege. If not reined in, the government may employ similar tactics to intercept additional privileged communications, their lawyers contended.
Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case
Two neutral electronic privacy groups also joined in, urging the high court to hear the case on First Amendment grounds.
Prosecutors, however, claim that the corporation never shown that Trump utilized the account for official purposes, therefore executive privilege is not a problem. A lower court also determined that informing Trump could have compromised the current probe.
Trump utilized his Twitter account in the weeks preceding up to his supporters’ attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to spread false assertions about the election, which prosecutors claim were intended to create doubt in the democratic process.
The indictment describes how Trump used his Twitter account to encourage his followers to travel to Washington on Jan. 6, pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to reject the certification, and falsely claiming that the Capitol crowd, which battered police officers and destroyed glass, was peaceful.
Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case
That case is now moving forward following the Supreme Court’s verdict in July, which granted Trump full immunity from criminal prosecution as a former president.
The warrant arrived at Twitter amid quick changes implemented by Musk, who bought the company in 2022 and has since cut off most of its workforce, including those dedicated to combating disinformation and hate speech.
SOURCE | AP
News
The Supreme Court Turns Down Biden’s Government Appeal in a Texas Emergency Abortion Matter.
(VOR News) – A ruling that prohibits emergency abortions that contravene the Supreme Court law in the state of Texas, which has one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the country, has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The United States Supreme Court upheld this decision.
The justices did not provide any specifics regarding the underlying reasons for their decision to uphold an order from a lower court that declared hospitals cannot be legally obligated to administer abortions if doing so would violate the law in the state of Texas.
Institutions are not required to perform abortions, as stipulated in the decree. The common populace did not investigate any opposing viewpoints. The decision was made just weeks before a presidential election that brought abortion to the forefront of the political agenda.
This decision follows the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended abortion nationwide.
In response to a request from the administration of Vice President Joe Biden to overturn the lower court’s decision, the justices expressed their disapproval.
The government contends that hospitals are obligated to perform abortions in compliance with federal legislation when the health or life of an expectant patient is in an exceedingly precarious condition.
This is the case in regions where the procedure is prohibited. The difficulty hospitals in Texas and other states are experiencing in determining whether or not routine care could be in violation of stringent state laws that prohibit abortion has resulted in an increase in the number of complaints concerning pregnant women who are experiencing medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms.
The administration cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case that bore a striking resemblance to the one that was presented to it in Idaho at the beginning of the year. The justices took a limited decision in that case to allow the continuation of emergency abortions without interruption while a lawsuit was still being heard.
In contrast, Texas has been a vocal proponent of the injunction’s continued enforcement. Texas has argued that its circumstances are distinct from those of Idaho, as the state does have an exemption for situations that pose a significant hazard to the health of an expectant patient.
According to the state, the discrepancy is the result of this exemption. The state of Idaho had a provision that safeguarded a woman’s life when the issue was first broached; however, it did not include protection for her health.
Certified medical practitioners are not obligated to wait until a woman’s life is in imminent peril before they are legally permitted to perform an abortion, as determined by the state supreme court.
The state of Texas highlighted this to the Supreme Court.
Nevertheless, medical professionals have criticized the Texas statute as being perilously ambiguous, and a medical board has declined to provide a list of all the disorders that are eligible for an exception. Furthermore, the statute has been criticized for its hazardous ambiguity.
For an extended period, termination of pregnancies has been a standard procedure in medical treatment for individuals who have been experiencing significant issues. It is implemented in this manner to prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as sepsis, organ failure, and other severe scenarios.
Nevertheless, medical professionals and hospitals in Texas and other states with strict abortion laws have noted that it is uncertain whether or not these terminations could be in violation of abortion prohibitions that include the possibility of a prison sentence. This is the case in regions where abortion prohibitions are exceedingly restrictive.
Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which resulted in restrictions on the rights of women to have abortions in several Republican-ruled states, the Texas case was revisited in 2022.
As per the orders that were disclosed by the administration of Vice President Joe Biden, hospitals are still required to provide abortions in cases that are classified as dire emergency.
As stipulated in a piece of health care legislation, the majority of hospitals are obligated to provide medical assistance to patients who are experiencing medical distress. This is in accordance with the law.
The state of Texas maintained that hospitals should not be obligated to provide abortions throughout the litigation, as doing so would violate the state’s constitutional prohibition on abortions. In its January judgment, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with the state and acknowledged that the administration had exceeded its authority.
SOURCE: AP
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