World Food Policy Volume/Issue 2-2/3-1 Fall 2015/Spring 2016 | Page 6

Food Security in Rural Cambodia and Fishing in the Mekong in the Light of Declining Fish Stocks

people’s subjective well-being (Bush 2004;
Marschke and Berkes 2006), it plays an
essential role in ensuring food security in
many rural households not only through
fish consumption but also through cash
income from selling fish. More than 50%
of the small-scale fishers’ catch is sold
(Hori et al. 2006; Navy and Bhattarai
2009). Fish is an ideal food to improve
food security in developing countries
such as Cambodia because, despite access
regulations, it is easily accessible even
for poor households and it has a high
density of proteins and micronutrients
(Kawarazuka and Béné 2010; 2011).
Although
the
livelihood
outcomes2 of many rural Cambodians
depend on small-scale capture fisheries,
the output from aquaculture still remains
low (Hortle, Lieng, and Valbo-Jorgensen
2004; Hortle 2007; Navy and Bhattarai
2009). At the same time, aquaculture is
undertaken by only a limited number of
households in the area (Bush 2004). After
the end of political unrest in the 1990s
Cambodia’s fishing output increased.
There is an academic debate whether
fish stocks are currently declining (
Hortle, Lieng, and Valbo-Jorgensen 2004;
Baran, Jantunen, and Chong 2007). Most
current empirical evidence points at a
negative development of fish stocks in the
Mekong River, especially in important
migratory species which contribute
significantly to the catch in the study site
of this article (Roberts and Baird 1995;

Baran and Myschowoda 2009; Orr et al.
2012). However, even if fish stocks were
currently not declining, reduction in the
near future seems to be certain (Baran
and Myschowoda 2008). Declining
fishing margins are already observed
because costs increase and output per
fishing trip decreases (Navy and Bhattarai
2009). There is a number of reasons for
the reduction of fish stocks, among them
are the construction of hydroelectric
dams in the upstream countries of the
Mekong River, habitat loss, overfishing
due to improved technology, increasing
population, and illegal fishing practices
(Hortle, Lieng, and Valbo-Jorgensen
2004; Hori et al. 2006; Baran, Jantunen,
and Chong 2007; Navy and Bhattarai
2009). The active management of fish
resources and enforcement of fishing
regulations is important to sustain the
extraordinary productivity of Cambodian
fisheries (Degen and Thuok 1998).
However, these measures may prove to
be useless if the construction of further
dams for hydropower as well as for water
regulation and irrigation leads to artificial
changes in water levels and barring of
fish-spawning grounds resulting in a
reduction of fishing output (Hortle,
Lieng, and Valbo-Jorgensen 2004; Ziv et
al. 2012).

Part of the narrative of decreasing
fish stocks in the Mekong river is the
fear that the decline will lead to reduced
food security (Arthur and Friend 2011).

1

The concept of livelihoods is extensive and refers to more than what is the focus of this article. We refer
to the term of livelihood to point at the importance of fishing among the wide portfolio of livelihood
activities undertaken by the rural households to earn a living. While in theory livelihood outcomes include various results of these activities for a household, we focus on food security as it is the main point
of concern in this article.
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