Over the past year, severe drought exacerbated by upstream hydropower dams has throttled agricultural productivity, devastated fisheries, and threatened the livelihoods of millions of people in the Mekong River Basin. The coronavirus pandemic is compounding this situation, disrupting supply chains and increasing price volatility for rice and other staples. While Mekong governments have assured their populations of secure food supplies, concerns are growing around the affordability and accessibility of food for the region’s most vulnerable populations. Nowhere are these risks of growing food insecurity more evident than in Cambodia.
For farmers and fishers throughout the Mekong River Basin, the coronavirus couldn’t have hit at a worse time. In April 2019, the region began suffering a prolonged and severe drought. An El Niño weather pattern led to widespread water shortages, as the monsoon rainswhich typically fall from May to October and usher in planting of the primary rice cropfailed to appear. Reservoirs across the region began to run dry, and the waters of the lower Mekong dropped to historic lows. Chinese dams on the upper Mekong worsened the drought’s impact, restricting water from flowing downstream where it could have alleviated record dry conditions.
Agricultural communities have suffered greatly. By July, Thailand declared an emergency in 12 provinces and asked farmers to delay planting rice crops to avoid using what little water was left for vulnerable households. Reservoir levels remained low throughout the rainy season, and in early 2020, Bangkok deployed the military to implement drought disaster mitigation in 43 provinces. Preliminary estimates point to a sharp drop of between 40 percent and 54 percent for the country’s off-season rice production. Meanwhile in Laos, water levels on the Mekong River were recorded nearly 7 meters below normal in Vientiane. Because of the arid conditions, farmers were able to plant rice only on around 40 percent of the country’s arable land, and the government estimated that production for the year would be 17,500 tons lower than in 2018. Vietnam has faced similar challenges but fared better. With freshwater flows in the Mekong diminished, saline seawater pushed farther into the country’s delta heartland, eventually damaging over 30,000 hectares of rice fields. The government moved quickly to work with farmers to shift rice-planting seasons and avoid risking the main crop, and as a result, the country’s production is anticipated to drop by only around 3 percent in 2020.
Cambodia has been hit particularly hard by the drought. By December, some 45,000 hectares of rice paddy had been damaged, and 16 of the country’s 25 provinces were facing freshwater shortages. The government recommended that farmers forgo a second rice crop to conserve water, and aid organizations began to share reports of farmers struggling under the debt burden of failed crops.
As a still developing nation, Cambodia remains heavily reliant on agriculture to sustain livelihoods and provide food. Subsistence farming is commonthe United Nations Development Program estimates that over 70 percent of Cambodian farms engage in some version of the practiceand the agriculture sector employs more than 30 percent of the population, contributing more than one-fifth of the national GDP. The majority of farmed land is used for rice, and farmers regularly take out loans to cover the cost of supplies necessary for their harvest. For many, a poor or destroyed crop yield can mean financial ruin.
At the same time that the region’s agriculture has been starved of water, the country’s fish catch has collapsed. The Mekong River system is the world’s largest freshwater fishery, typically producing more than 2.6 million tons of fish each year. A quarter of this comes from Cambodia and most of that from the Tonle Sap Lake. While heavy monsoons in 2018 led to a larger than usual catch, changes in flow from hydropower dams and climate change, as well as overfishing, have led to steeply declining catches in recent years.