IJERD – International Journal of Environmental and Rural Development (2010) 1–1

Research article
erd

Seasonal Direct-Use Value of Cheung Ek Peri-Urban Lake,
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
SEILA SAR
Royal University of Agriculture, Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Email: sar_seila2005@yahoo.com

COLAS CHERVIER
Royal University of Agriculture, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

PUY LIM
Ecole Nationale Supérieur Agronomique de Toulouse, Toulouse, France

CRISTY WARRENDER, GARRY W. WARRENDER AND
ROBERT G. GILBERTThe University of Queensland, Centre for Nutrition and Food Sciences, Australia
Received 30 December 2009

Accepted 5 March 2010

Abstract Cheung Ek Lake receives 80% of Phnom Penh’s urban wastewater. Since mostof the lakes around Phnom Penh are being reclaimed for urban development, surveys were
undertaken to analyze the direct-use economic value of Cheung Ek lake in the dry season,
which could serve for policy-makers’ future considerations. The direct-use value wasassessed by summing total income of all activities performed on the lake. Income wascalculated using a bottom-up approach based on a stratified sampling and on in-depth
interviews of 192 households using structured questionnaires for each household’s
activity. The primary activities are water spinach, water mimosa, and rice cultivation,
fishing, and duck raising. Over a six-month period, farmer receive an average profit of
4,168 USD/ha from water mimosa cultivation, 1,553 USD/ha from water spinach
cultivation, 512 USD from fishing, 506 USD/ha from dry season rice cultivation, and 157
USD/100 ducks from duck raising. After multiplication by the total area of plants (fromremote sensing), and number of household and duck numbers (by direct investigation), thedirect-use value was estimated at more than 1 million USD, of which water spinachproduction contributes 65%, fishing 20%, water mimosa production 13%, duck raising
1%, and dry season rice production 0.7%. The study suggests that almost a thousand of
direct-beneficiaries can generate part of their income from agriculture or fishery-related
activities performed on the lake. Moreover, the research targeted only one part of directuse value of the lake and thus largely underestimated the overall value of the lake.
Indirect-value components are community health (which can be greatly improved throughwater purification), and indirect-use value of the lake (e.g. tourism), both of which have
major economic implications and which must be taken into account in further research.
Keywords direct-use value, Cheung Ek Lake, water spinach, Phnom Penh

INTRODUCTION
Wastewater use in agriculture and aquaculture has a long history in China (Zhiwen, 1999),
Cambodia and Vietnam, to culture fish and aquatic plants in peri-urban wetlands (Kuong et al.,2005; Leschen et al., 2005; Lan et al., 2007). Phnom Penh, with a surface area of 375 km², issurrounded by wetland, of which 80% comprises natural lakes and low-plain agriculture. Every day,about 55,600 m3 of urban household wastewater and nearly 1 million m3 of storm water are
discharged into these wetlands (Muong, 2004). This wastewater is used in numerous plots locatedwithin and around the wetlands in peri-urban Phnom Penh, and provides important sources of© ISERD

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edible aquatic vegetables and fish farming to supply the food demand of the city and other areas ofCambodia (Khuong et al., 2005). Cheung Ek Lake, a seasonally inundated lake located about 5 km
to the south of Phnom Penh, is a large water body that receives 80% of the wastewater from Phnom
Penh’s urban population and from factories (garment and various other factories). Rainfall run-off
also discharges into the lake (Seyha and Tuan Anh, 2004). Cheung Ek Lake is an important area forgrowing aquatic plants and fish production, and harvesting is undertaken throughout the year. The
activities on the area of Cheung Ek Lake represent not just the most important source of the incomeof many households, but also the employment and income earning opportunities for manyseasonally hired labourers engaged in setting up, maintaining and harvesting the plants (Balmisseand Sylvain, 2003), as well as low-cost wastewater treatment. In 2009, 429 hectares of water
spinach, 32.1 hectares of water mimosa, and (during the dry season) 13.5 hectares of dry-season
rice were cultivated within the Cheung Ek Lake boundary (Teang, 2009).
The purpose of this research is to understand the economic value of Cheng Ek Lake byidentifying the primary human activities performed on the lake and assessing the direct use value ofthe lake from those activities that could assist policy-makers’ future considerations.
METHODOLOGY
An inundated lake, Cheung Ek Lake, was the research site of this study. The sampling was
primarily stratified by activity, as the human activity performed on the lake is very diverse. It wasthen stratified by village in order to obtain more reliable results, as farmers involved in eachactivity live in 15 different villages around the lake. 192 households from a total of 900 households
working directly on the lake were randomly selected for in-depth interview using a structured
questionnaire. The study was conducted from December 2008 to May 2009, which was a period of
dry season. Direct observation and interviews with key informants were first used to better
understand the diversified activities and the landscape of the area, followed by direct householdinterviews to obtain information on the household’s income-generating activities performed on thelake. The direct-use value of the lake was assessed by summing up the total profit of all activities
performed on the lake. The profit of each activity was calculated by the total income minus by the
total expense. This excluded the labour costs of 2–3 producers per household in each activity; theseproducers were not paid salary, being all family workers.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
On Cheung Ek Lake, five main socio-economic activities are undertaken by the farmers who havemigrated from other provinces throughout Cambodia. These five major activities are: water spinach
cultivation (350 households), water mimosa cultivation (110 households), dry season ricecultivation (19 households), fishing (402 households) and duck raising (19 households). In 2009, a
total of 900 households were working directly on the lake during the dry season.
Many of the respondents are not born in the districts, communities or villages where they
currently reside; they are mostly migrants from other provinces throughout the country. They camefrom Kampong Chhnang, Kampong Thom, Kandal, Prey Veng, Svay Reang and Takeo provinces.
As shown in Fig. 1, most of the water spinach and water mimosa cultivators and less than half offishermen and dry season rice cultivator are migrants while all the duck raisers were born in thisregion. The study indicated that the migration from the provinces for water mimosa cultivation in
Cheung Ek Lake started within the last five years, while for water spinach cultivation it started
more than 20 years previously and has been increasing with time. The results from this research
indicate similar reasons for the migration process to those found by Rigg and Salamanca (2006a). It
is suggested that the major reasons that respondents gave for moving to peri-urban aquatic plants
production region are: to find work, to follow or join their families, to move into a new economic
zone, to pursue a work-related initiative, as well as due to war or marriage. Thus, it can be assumed
that the movement of people to peri-urban regions are propelled primarily by work or livelihood© ISERD

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concerns. The migration rate has been steadily increasing over time, which leads to greater demandof land for agricultural activities, thus pushing the renting cost to increase significantly.

Fig. 1 Migration of farmers to Cheung Ek Lake
As most of the farmers working on the lake were migrants from other provinces throughout
the country, they needed to rent the land on average 300-400 USD per hectare for their activities: asshown in Table 1, almost of the water spinach and water mimosa cultivators were renters, as weremore than half of dry season rice cultivator and duck raisers. Some of the producers on the lakeown the land for cultivation. In a very few cases, farmers were asked to look after the land by thelandlord and were able to work on the land without paying rent. According to Rigg and Salamanca(2006b), the ownership of the land among surveyed households in Aquatic Food Plants Production
Systems in both Bangkok and Ho Chi Minh City is high, but this is not the case for either Phnom
Penh or Hanoi. Kuong et al. (2006) stated that, in Phnom Penh, about 10% of the households fromtwo villages, Kbal Tumnub and Thnout Chrum, owned the land for water spinach cultivation. The
present research has found similar results: most of the water mimosa and water spinach cultivatorsand the duck raisers in Cheung Ek Lake need to rent the water surface area from the landlord fortheir cultivation (95%, 92% and 63% respectively). In addition, only 53% among 19 households of
dry season rice cultivators need to rent the land for dry season rice practice on the lake.
Table 1 Land ownership by activity
Activity
Water spinach cultivation
Water mimosa cultivation
Dry season rice
Duck raising

Rent (%)

Owned (%)
92.4
95.0
53.0
63.2

7.6
5.0
21.0
21.0

Other (%)
0.0
0.0
26.0
15.8

Generally, villagers can only own water surface area they inherited from their forebears. Few
migrants own the water area they use for cultivation. Most farmers find difficulty in facing the highcost of water-surface area rental and the expense of chemicals. Thus, they need to borrow money in
any way they can for their initial inputs. The cultivators usually borrow money from the middlemen
and they pay the interest in the form of selling the product back at slightly lower than the market
price, or they borrow from their neighbours at a high rate of interest (about 10%) and can sell theirproducts at the market price. There are a limited number of farmers who borrow money frommicro-credit banks or organizations, as most do not want to follow the institution’s restrictions. It isvery rare for the fishermen, rice cultivators, and duck raisers to borrow the money from theirproduction as their initial input is not as high as water spinach and water mimosa production. Mostof the farmers working on both aquatic plants cultivation and fish culture in the four main cities inSoutheast Asia mentioned the need to take a loan for their initial costs of production, except in Ho
Chi Minh City where most of the farmers could not take the credit from any sources of loan as they
did not meet the loan terms set by the government. According to Yoonpundh et al. (2006), fewer
aquatic plant cultivators took out loans for their cultivation (water spinach cultivator 27% and© ISERD

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water mimosa cultivator 10%). Nevertheless, the results from Kuong et al. (2006) found that many
water spinach producers in Kbal Tumnob and Thnout Chrum villages in the Phnom Penh periurban region took out credit (60% and 40% respectively). The results from this research, as shownin Fig. 2, are similar to the previous results of Kuong et al. (2006), as 63% of the total households
from 8 villages working on water spinach cultivation and 59% of water mimosa cultivators tookloans from various sources for the initial input of production.

Fig. 2 Credit for inputs of production
The producer can either sell the product to the middlemen or sell it directly at the markets. The
product is transported by middleman or producer to the wholesalers in the main markets in Phnom
Penh. At these markets, the wholesalers sell the product to retailers from other markets in Phnom
Penh and also to other traders from the provinces, such as Koh Kong, Sihanuk ville, and Kampong
Cham. Finally, the product is sold to consumers for their daily household diet. The results from thisstudy are similar to those of (Yoonpundh et al., 2006; Huy and Hung, 2006; Phuong et al., 2006;
Kuong et al., 2006) regarding market processing. It seems that the marketing process for aquatic
food production is quite similar throughout Southeast Asia. The transaction cost from producer toconsumer is an average 900 riels per bunch for water spinach and 1,600 riels per kilogram for water
mimosa. The prices of both water spinach and water mimosa are higher in the dry season than in
the wet season. Fishermen sell their product to the local markets in the nearest accessible market
whereas the main markets for the middlemen’s supply are not identified yet. Duck eggs are sold by
farmers to the middlemen, and then they are supplied to the local market and also transported to themain markets in Phnom Penh. The product from rice production is usually used for household
consumption, although in some cases it is sold to neighbours in the villages.
The findings show that the household income varies with activity: water spinach cultivators
obtained an average income of 1,431 USD, water mimosa cultivators 1,795 USD, fishermen 512
USD, dry season rice cultivators 359 USD, and duck raisers 537 USD per household per dry
season. Yoonpundh et al. (2006) stated in the report of the Production in Aquatic Peri-Urban
Systems in Southeast Asia (PAPUSSA) that the water spinach farmers in Bangkok received higher
income (3,943 USD/HH/year) compared to water mimosa farmers (120 USD/ HH/year). This
happened as the water mimosa was destroyed by contaminated water in the canal during the time ofsurvey. These are similar results to those of Huy and Hung (2006). The results of the survey on perurban aquatic food production in Phnom Penh showed that income levels of households involved inwater spinach production in the Cheung Ek lake area were mostly found to be within 200-500
USD/HH/year. Less than one third of these households ranked their annual income from water
spinach production in the range of 500-1000 USD and only a few earned within 1000-5000 USD(Kuong et al., 2006). The average price received by the producer per bunch of water spinach was
only 134 riels. The present research shows that water spinach cultivators in Cheung Ek Lake now
receive improved benefits than in the previous 3 years, with an average profit of 1,431 per six
months. The profit of water spinach cultivators may be increased as the average price per bunch ofwater spinach has increased to 550 riels, and most of the cultivators have increased the water© ISERD

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surface area for water spinach production. The difference of the results of current research and theresults of Kuong et al. (2006) may happen because of the sampling methods. Koung et al. (2006)
randomly selected the respondents from the two main villages involved in water spinach cultivationwhilst in the present research, the respondents were selected from all the 15 villages where thefarmers are involved in water spinach cultivation and the sampling is first stratified by activity
performed on the lake and then by village.
The direct use value of Cheung Ek Lake is the sum of the total cash net income from eachdirect human activity during the period of the dry season. Table 2 shows that households received a
total profit of 1,020,236 USD over the six months of the dry season: a substantial total. Within this,water spinach production gave the main contribution (65%), 666,237 USD with a total cultivation
area of 429 ha whilst dry season rice production is the smallest contribution among the five
(0.67%) with a total profit of 6,912 USD with a total area of 13.5 hectares.
Table 2 Direct use value of Cheung Ek Lake during the dry season
Activity
Water spinach
Water mimosa
Fishing
Dry season rice
Duck raising

Average profit (USD)
1,553 /ha
4,168 /ha
512 /HH
506 /ha157 /100 heads

Total area/household/head
429 ha32.1 ha
402 HHs
13.5 ha
6,293 heads

Total

Total profit (USD)
666,237
133,793
203,4126,912
9,882
1,020,236

CONCLUSION
Cheung Ek Lake is a vital economic resource on the urban margin of Phnom Penh, providing atleast more than a million USD per dry season to about a thousand direct beneficiaries. The
agricultural activities provide a vital fresh food source for markets and help to assure food securityin Phnom Penh as well as being distributed to other provinces throughout the country. This regional
economy also involves growers, wholesalers, distributors and local customers, and provides avaluable trade network in essential commodities such as foodstuffs and animal fodder. Among thefive types of farmers, water mimosa cultivators receive the highest household income (1,795 USD)
whereas dry season rice cultivators obtain the lowest (359 USD). Within the substantial profit fromthe direct value of the lake, water spinach production gives the main contribution (65%) whilst dry
season rice production is gives the least contribution among the five (0.67%). Given the significant
value of the lake to the local people found in this research, policy-makers should make carefulconsiderations before implementing future development plans on this lake region as it may affectseriously on many households’ livelihoods and the food security in Phnom Penh.
The direct use value here is just a part of the overall economic value of the lake and it focuses
only that from the direct beneficiaries of the human activities on the lake. The value from theindirect beneficiaries such as harvester, middlemen, wholesalers, and retailers should be exploredand considered as a part of the direct use value of the lake, as well as the indirect impact of healthand future tourism. This body of water also functions as a means of water purification, which isregarded as another component to the direct use value. Water purification and the indirect use valueof the lake which are great importance for future economic potential must be taken into account toassess the overall economic value of the lake. Although agricultural activities provide a vital
economic link to food markets, there is growing concern for the health implications of this practice.
Waste, including heavy metals, organic pollutants, dissolved nutrients, and biologically active
agents are entering the lake throughout the year, with dilution as the only mitigating factor. This
wastewater constitutes a dangerous situation for the socio-economic importance of Cheung Ek
Lake, as negative effects on human health and economic viability of agricultural practices begin toappear. The implications are two-fold: (i) for the individual - the high cost medical bills and (ii) forthe community - mitigating problems of poor health and disease epidemics, compounded by a
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workforce containing significant numbers of people too unwell to contribute to the economy. A
simple wastewater treatment plant to reduce pathogens and contaminants entering the lake could
overcome many of these problems. If coupled with policies on waste for industries, agriculture andurban communities will see a positive impact on the socio-economic health and wealth of thisregion. In addition, there is the indirect use of the lake region that could arise in the future fromtourism if the lake is relatively unpolluted.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Funding from French Solidarity Priority Project and Aqua-internship Support are highly acknowledged.
Robert G. Gilbert gratefully acknowledges the support of a grant (LP0882618) from the Australian
Research Council.

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