Kompong Phluk's main street in the wet season in fully flooded, with all traffic moving on boats and barges. Each house become an island. The waters of the Tonle Sap begin to rise in June and reach full flood in early October.

Tonle Sap is the heart of mainland Southeast Asia, fed by the mighty Mekong River, sheltered by vast tropical forests that have covered the surrounding hills and plains for millennia. It has played a central role in the evolution of human civilization and continues to be a key factor in the Cambodian economy. In 2000, the estimated value of the annual fish catch of over one million tons was US$ 800 million, representing a major food source for the people of Cambodia, as well as neighboring Thailand and Vietnam. Studies indicate over 1200 species of fish inhabit the Mekong River and the Great Lake, including the 300 kilogram giant freshwater catfish (Pangasianodon gigas) and the freshwater Irrawaddy dolphin.

Kompong Phluk's main street in the dry season after the lake's water have receded.

Forests play a critical role in sustaining the aquatic ecology of the lake. In the upper watersheds, temperate montane and tropical rainforests slow water run-off and greatly reduce erosion and downstream sedimentation. Around the lake, flood forests protect the lake core during the dry season, and act as an immense hatchery during the rainy season. The health of the Great Lake is also closely linked with the flow of the Mekong River. During the wet season, the lake expands to 5 times its dry season size, and its average depth increases 6 to 8 times, with an estimated 60 percent of the additional water, flowing down the Mekong River, then turning north and reversing its flow into the Tonle Sap River. Ecologically and economically, the Tonle Sap and the Mekong River are among the most important hydrological systems in the world, yet their ability to continue to function as they have in the past is in question, in part due to upstream dam construction, especially in China.

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In 2001, the commercial fishing lots established under the French administration were revised and around 20 were given to communities in the flood zone. While eight fish sanctuaries were established (Map 1).

Forest protection is not new to Kompong Phluk. The village first initiated a ban on flood forest cutting in 1944, after clearing for watermelon cultivation threatened the forests that had protected the village from high winds and waves that blew off the lake in the rainy season. Pressures on the forest emerged again as commercial mung bean farmers from surrounding areas sought to clear local flood forests. While the community has been aware of the need to protect the forests for over half a century, the need to strengthen their efforts through an alliance with local government became clear in the late 1990s.

Nearly 100 other communities in Siem Reap, both those along the lake, as well as in upland watersheds have been assisted by the project to establish forest management systems. An important element in the FAO project was its effort to link communities and local government offices of fisheries and forestry. The initiative demonstrated that Cambodia provincial technical agencies can play a strategic role in facilitating the development of community resource management systems provided they are given assistance in building their extension capacity, both in terms of funding and technical assistance.

The FAO supported project in Siem Reap is also significant as it developed operational strategies to implement new policy and legal reforms taking place in Cambodia that addressed commercial inland fisheries. In Siem Reap Province, the pressures associated with the fishing concession system have helped catalyze the release of 536,000 hectares of commercial fishing grounds, over 50 percent of all fishing lease areas in the country, to the communities for community fisheries management. The transfer occurred on 31 May 2001 and in anticipation, the Prime Minister decided to remove all the fisheries staff from the Tonle Sap and sent them back to their office, creating an open access situation that severely depleted the resources of the lake that year. The fisheries staff area now back in Tonle Sap and slowly, they are learning to work with a growing number of Community Fishery Organizations with support from local and international NGOs.

Fishing is a primary source of cash income for Kompong Phluk's families. Over 500 species of fish have been identified in the lower Mekong Basin. Dozen of species are caught in the village utilizing a wide-range of dipnets, gillnets, castnest, lines, traps, spears, and other techniques.

Rising population pressures in rural Cambodia, rapid policy and political changes, and the introduction of new technologies and markets has overwhelmed traditional systems of flood forest and fisheries management. Over-extraction has drawn down fish populations to a point that threatens many species, while undermining the livelihood of thousands of communities that reside around the lake and along the river. The most serious long term threats to these natural resources, and the populations that depend on them, are deforestation and dam construction in upstream catchments. Deforestation in both upper watersheds and lower watersheds near the lake has occurred at a rapid pace, especially in the past decade, sending enormous loads of silt clogging the river and lake. Commercial logging in China, Burma, Laos, and Cambodia has degraded forests in many parts of the regions that drain into the Mekong River, which in turn feeds the Great Lake. Clearing of over 50 percent of the flood forest that surrounds Tonle Sap, has reduced the riparian buffer that limits the influx of sediment, and substantially lessened fish breeding grounds.