Polluting Koh Rong Island

- Oh F***! [hitting my little toe on a piece of garbage] I just hate walking barefoot on this dirty sand road! Why do not they keep it clean!
- Stop complaining about the same thing every day. There is nothing to be done about it.

This conversation got me thinking about the pollution problem on Koh Rong Island. Tourism is quite new there and most of the island is still under-developed, thus relatively free of garbage, smoke and smell. However, there are various examples on other South East Asian islands about pollution harming their nature and tourism. Could Koh Rong be saved from the same destiny? Could governmental bodies, local entrepreneurs, international investors and individual tourists act proactively to develop the island in a sustainable way?

Clean Koh San beach

The Government. There are no systematically working municipalities on Koh Rong taking care of waste management. To prevent garbage getting piled up on the island, there should be collection points and cargo ships to transport it away. Taken that Cambodia is a poor and corrupted country, its government most likely has not got ability or interest to consider the long-term consequences of pollution.

Local people. For some reason, many Cambodians seem to be keen on buying lots of cheap trish-trash items, as well as packing everything on styrox containers and plastic bags. All this garbage gets thrown away on their backyards, roads and waters. It might be difficult to convince people, who are used to messiness and miss environmental education, to change their behavior. I wonder if it comes down to laziness, missing alternatives or long-sightless thinking.

Resort companies. Unfortunately some multinational companies follow good environmental policies only in western countries, but act irresponsibly in countries not having strict anti-pollution laws. It has been noticed that they simply move waste out of tourists' sight, until it eventually bursts out of its piles. These companies should have enough intelligence to foresee the prevailing problem, and therefore build real waste management structures to protect their resorts.

Tourists, like me. If a big enough number of tourists chooses eco friendly service providers, maybe the trend spreads wider and changes overall standards towards greener ways of acting. However, at the moment most tourists tolerate some amount of garbage. When one place becomes too polluted for them, they abandon it as a travel destiny and go somewhere else, but at that point it is already too late to change things.

No more swimming here

To summarize, my thoughts seem negative and hopeless. I think that the key to change could be money. If these different stakeholders could exercise long-term thinking, they would realize that environmentalism benefits everyone: tourism stays as a prospering livelihood, companies generate revenues past the next quarters, tourists have destinations where to go, inhabitants can live healthier lives etc. I wish that people in power would think beyond their political terms, careers or holidays and invest in lasting sustainability.

- So while I took a shower I thought about the issue. Could this financial reasoning be explained to the interest groups? If they all acted on their own behalf, making some longer-term investments, would there be positive changes? How could it be organized?
- Maybe you should make a project out of this. It could be your new job.

Trash truck on mainland

My week's water bottles