The Mekong River Essay Sample
The Mekong River runs through Cambodia and Vietnam where it flows out into the South China Sea. This enormously of import river is home to a figure of drifting small towns throughout Cambodia and Vietnam. However alterations in the river degrees and the effects of pollution threaten these established communities and there topographic point in society every bit good as how they utilise the infinite around them.
On a boat trip of the Mekong River in July this twelvemonth I got to see. firsthand. how these drifting communities map and how the people interact with the unusual infinite around them. Within proceedingss I witnessed a immature male child traveling to the lavatory over the side of his natation place. into the river. I saw his neighbour rinsing her dishes in the same H2O. Then a immature adult female passed. in a boat. keeping a little babe. who she was feeding with H2O heterosexual from her thenars from the cloudy H2O of the river. The hapless sanitation of the river causes the people from the small towns legion tummy and enteric disease because they use the same H2O to cook. clean. bathe and drink.
Another cause of pollution to the river is from improperly discarded trash and pollution from the boats that run up and down all twenty-four hours. The river suffers from unstable H2O degrees. caused by planetary heating and a nearby dike. The river can periodically turn from holding low H2O degrees to doing big countries of implosion therapy. The quality of the H2O has worsened quickly over the past old ages and hence affects the figure of fish that are able to last within it. This. in bend. has had a great impact on the supports of the community. The community is mostly supported by fishing ; nevertheless with nil to catch the economic system of these little small towns is crumpling.
The authorities has the undertaking of back uping these small towns so they can keep onto their traditional manner of life and maintain their topographic point on the river every bit good as their topographic point in history. There was an effort to incentivise the people to travel onto dry land but it failed. Tim Creswell explains why the villagers may hold been unable to accommodate to life on land ‘within state provinces oppressed groups try to collar their ain identities’ . Now an attempt is being made to educate the community and its younger coevalss. They are taught about sanitation and safe H2O usage. There is besides a immense undertaking underway to fit all natation small towns with a drifting community waste sanitation systems – a floating lavatory.
Unfortunatly other jobs that are impacting the livelhood of the villagers are due to outside beginnings who use the Mekong River for dredging. Companies are taking the deposit from the base of the river. to utilize as a stuff. without believing about the consequence it has on the environing landscape. The alteration in river flow and fall ining Bankss effects the people who live on the H2O and on land.
If a combined attempt is made by the villagers. the authorities and the people on the other side of the Earth who see images ( like mine ) of the villagers a alteration can be made to salvage the lone topographic point these people call place. Thrift ( 2003 ) reminds us to look beyond and around the images we see. wherever you are. because so many images like this one compete for our attending and change our apprehension of the infinite between us and the issues. We must retrieve that although a great sum of infinite stretches between us and the natation villagers. the pollution of the Mekong River indirectly effects us and the planet we all live on. Geography surveies the topographic points within topographic points and how each mini home ground effects the following one up.
Refrences
Cresswell. T. ( 2004 ) Topographic point: A short debut. Blackwell. Oxford Thrift. N. ( 2003 ) Space: The Fundemental Stuff of Human Geography. In holloway. S. Rice. P and Valentine. G ( eds. ) Key Concepts in geographics. Sage. London hypertext transfer protocol: //www. Ges. gla. Ac. uk:443/staff/rthomas accessed 09/10/12
