Climate Sadness: The Fragile Beauty of Tonle Sap

摘要

Tonle Sap is the large fresh water lake-river near the geographic center of Cambodia. Visiting Tonle Sap, following an academic conference in Phnom Penh, demanded a response at a personal and more visceral human level. Writing this poem attempted to express disquiet beyond academic examination of the biophysical dimensions of Tonle Sap. The poem is sad for Tonle Sap, for Cambodia, and implicitly for all of us on this planet. For thousands of years people have lived around Tonle Sap, adapting to weather, the flow of water from mountain to sea, and the changing ebb and flow of civilizations. Anthropogenic sea level rise challenges all of this human history, unnecessarily.