Sim Him has organized the planting of more than 200,000 mangrove trees in Cambodia’s Trapeang Sangke estuary. The surrounding ecosystem, which feeds thousands of families, is thriving.
But the nearby construction of a ferry terminal and a luxury resort are upsetting the estuary’s equilibrium, and development projects continue west along the coastline from there.
Dotted along a 25-kilometer (15.5-mile) coastal strip, no less than six large-scale developments present a direct threat to healthy mangrove forests and the fishing communities they support.
Aside from being a nursery for sealife and a barrier to erosion, mangroves are also one of the planet’s most effective carbon neutralizers, capable of capturing and storing it for millennia.
KAMPOT, Cambodia — As the Trapeang Sangke estuary opens up into the Gulf of Thailand, the dense green mangroves that line its edges taper off in stages, from thick, full-grown forest down to new, spindly saplings marking a perfect frontier. On a timber deck that stretches by gangplank out over the furthest reach of this 337-hectare (833-acre) mangrove plantation, its guardian, Sim Him, was talking about the future.

“That’s the shipping lane,” he said, pointing toward two peaks of golden earth protruding from the ocean, “and the resort development,” he continued, raising both eyebrows and sweeping an arm over a bay crawling with tiny, rundown fishing boats, “is here.”

Seven years ago, Him gave up fishing in Kampot Bay off Cambodia’s southern coast and began growing mangroves. From a spider’s web of timber huts and walkways built over shallow, muddy waters, he sprouts and nurtures saplings and then replants them at the outer edges of the forest. Kampot Mangrove Forest, his not-for-profit organization that hosts environmentally minded travellers and students, has successfully transplanted more than 200,000 individual trees. As a result, this diverse estuarine ecosystem is thriving. The benefits spill out into a stretch of water that is the hunting grounds of small-scale and commercial fishing boats from both Cambodia and Vietnam.

But something has changed in recent months, Him said. The number of saplings surviving the transplanting process has decreased, from 95 percent to about 30 percent. Toxic sediment has spread to the plantation after a channel was dredged in the seafloor to service an under-construction ferry terminal. The terminal, itself built on 4 hectares (10 acres) of buried mangrove forest, is just one in a series of industrial and commercial developments set to impose oil tankers, factory zones and cargo ships on this placid bay of mangrove forests, salt fields and fishermen.

Dotted along a 25-kilometer (15.5-mile) strip of Cambodian coastline, no less than six large-scale developments present a direct threat to healthy mangrove forests, which, as a nursery for fish and crustaceans, stand at the vital center of an ecosystem supporting thousands of families.

The ferry terminal, being built with an $18 million loan from the Asian Development Bank, aims to bring passengers from nearby Thai and Vietnamese resort islands — upward of 360,000 of them a year, starting in 2019. An environmental assessment conducted in 2014 found that the terminal could harm mangrove forests and would destroy seagrass meadows. Earlier this month, an Asian Development Bank officer told Mongabay via email that a revised environmental management plan would be published in the first quarter of 2018. The project was approved by the Cambodian Ministry of Economy and Finance and has been well publicized. The remainder of the projects, however, have been less transparent.

more here:
https://news.mongabay.com/2018/01/mega- ... odian-bay/

It's a natural progression. After you destroy all the forests on land, you destroy all the forests on the shore and under the water.

Who's they?
When I look at the things we have done and continue to do back in Oz, I wonder.... who the fuck are we to judge?

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