Vulnerable Populations in the Mekong River Basin, Cambodia
On Wednesday, October 30 at 6:00 PM at the Shattuck Gallery, Dr. Taber Hand will give a presentation that focuses on Cambodia’s Mekong River and Tonle Sap Lake, which has the most productive freshwater fishery and the most complex hydro-ecological system in the world. This area supplies 70% of the country’s dietary protein and fats. More specifically, Taber’s presentation concerns the intertwined topics of the Mekong River watershed – its Tonle Sap Lake socio-economics, food security, hydrology/hydropower futures and sanitation (WASH) for floating community in a challenging environment.
Are there any “little green doors” for a sustainable future on Tonle Sap Lake or at other global hotspots with growing populations? Taber’s company Wetlands Work! (WW!) developed a unique wastewater technology, called the HandyPod, used at Tonle Sap Lake and other UN World Heritage and Biosphere Reserve sites where biodiversity and biological production (food) coincides with human populations.
WW! is a 10-year-old social enterprise business in Cambodia. The HandyPod is the only appropriate wastewater treatment technology for people living in conditions where traditional pit latrines do not work, including floating, floodplain and seasonally high groundwater environments, clay, mangrove muds, and beach sand. Simple, affordable sanitation in challenging environments is needed, with ever more urgency, for vulnerable populations, such as environmental and conflict migrants moving into fragile, productive habitats that are frequently inundated with water and often legally without private ownership. The explosive demographic trends for East Asian urban areas published by the World Bank are compelling and alarming, yet no planners talk about the basic sanitation that they require. WW!’s simple HandyPod system is a solution and the company is now implementing creative sanitation marketing strategies in Cambodian and Myanmar floating and floodplain communities, with project interests in Assam and Benin, as well as Asian beach tourism sites.