Catch 22: wetlands protection and fishing for survival

Abstract

Environmental regulation of biodiversity hotspots, including wetlands, is of increasing importance in an era when species and habitat loss is common. A number of global environmental protection regimes attempt to set up processes that protect vulnerable species and their habitats. One such regulatory regime, the Ramsar Convention (Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, especially as Waterfowl Habitat), provides overarching protection for hundreds of wetlands around the world. In this paper, one Ramsar listed wetland, Southeast Asia's and Cambodia's largest freshwater lake, the Tonle Sap, is subject to a legal geographical analysis. A legal geography approach – one that puts front and centre an examination of both the environmental protection regulations for the wetlands and the people subject to them – enables the complexity of the legal‐human–environment dynamic in this unique wetlands to be revealed. Measuring the success, or otherwise, of environmental protection regulations requires an understanding of both the biophysical and social dynamics of the place subject to that protection. Geographers, particularly legal geographers, are well placed to document the human–environment dimensions of place and to expose fragilities or disconnections between regulations and place. Regulations that do not take adequate account of complex people–place dynamics are likely to fall short of expectations and run the risk of becoming self‐defeating, giving rise to a potential catch‐22 scenario.

Perceptions of gender dynamics in small‐scale fisheries and conservation areas in the Pursat province of Tonle Sap Lake, Cambodia

“…Personal communication revealed that patrolling conservation areas was indeed a great challenge for fishers, as conflict with illegal fishers could quickly become violent. Moreover, enforcing laws that prohibit or restrict fishers from fishing may not be the most plausible solution as this may affect local livelihoods, reduce food and income and create an even greater burden for already marginalised groups (Gillespie, : 343).…”

Claiming geothermal water: Critical legal geography and the scalar politics of hot spring development in China

“…Sometimes these legal practices are contradictory, and create local spatial conflicts. Analysing both formal state law and non-state normative orders relating to the wetlands of Tonle Sap in central Cambodia, Gillespie discloses the contradictions between state-based rules on wetland protection and social norms which challenge the power of local villages adjacent to the protected area (Gillespie, 2016b(Gillespie, , 2018.…”

Legal geography III

“…Bartel and Graham's 'Property and Place Attachment (2015) applies Nicole Graham's (2011) influential de-physicalization thesis to the legal reform process concerning biodiversity in New South Wales. As Gillespie (2015aGillespie ( , 2015b has argued in the context of Cambodia, Bartel and Graham note that 'The relevance of the dephysicalized nature of property to the protection of biodiversity is that legal and cultural discourses are unconcerned with the specific aspects of particular places. The placelessness of property creates substantial challenges for environmental laws that regulate the material aspects of landownership' (p. 8).…”