Welcome speech at The 2nd International Symposium and Conservation and Management of Tropical Lakes

1. Greetings and Self-introduction

Good morning, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen.

Welcome to Siem Reap, a world famous historical place, for the 2nd International Symposium on Conservation and Management of Tropical Lakes.

I am Yoshimura Chihiro from Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan.

Let me give you a short speech on behalf of the organizing committee of this symposium.

2. Environmental Management of Tropical Lakes

First, I would like to take a minute to remind you about the importance and the goal of this symposium.

After the 1st international symposium held at Phnom Penh, last year, this is our great pleasure to hold the 2nd symposium for further progress and development on Conservation and Management of Tropical Lakes.

As you know, lakes are not only a source of water and food for people, but also provide other essential ecosystem services to local societies that includes regulating the environment and supporting culture.

Therefore, understanding lake ecosystems is essential for better management and conservation of the lake resource for the future generations. And better practices are critically important given the continuous pressures from human activities and the impacts of climate change on lakes.

To this end, we need to answer key questions, for instance…

What kinds of environmental process do we need to put stress on tropical lakes compared to lakes in other regions in the world?

Does lake in tropical regions have higher self-purification capacity and higher ecological resilience compared to other lakes?

Can Tonle Sap Lake accommodate one million people on its water surface for next decades to maintain its ecosystem services?

How can we establish an interactive channel between researchers and stakeholders in this scope?

Yes, we do have many more… Anyway, those answers should be drawn based on proper understanding of unique ecological and cultural backgrounds in tropical regions.

3. Introduction of the Symposium

To respond to such questions and needs, this symposium gives us a wonderful chance, through which I believe we can come up with better ideas for conservation and wise management of our precious world’s lakes environment.

Right next to this city, we can see Tonle Sap Lake, which is the largest lake in Southeast Asia and one of the best examples for developing proper and feasible management practices.

Probably all of us know that this great lake plays critically important roles for the current and the future livelihood in Cambodia, much more important, in a sense, than the world heritage site we can see in this city.

Having this great lake, I am convinced that Cambodia has a great advantage in the world in research and development on water resource management, freshwater ecology and relevant environmental issues.

Also in this sense, we hope our symposium strongly promotes research and development in the field related to tropical lakes in the world.

In the next 3 days, as we can see in the program, we are going to share 5 preliminary lectures, 32 oral presentations, 26 poster presentations, 3 workshops, a panel discussion, and an excursion to a precious wetland in Tonle Sap Lake.

These statistics indicate our great progress and I believe that we have a great potential to bring about clearer and better concepts for aquatic environmental management.

4. About the project of Satreps

For your information, we are holding this symposium as a part of the project, which is entitled “Establishment of Environmental Conservation Platform of Tonle Sap Lake”, together with a kind participation also from an international project “Water, Society and Climate Change, WaSo”.

We are very glad and honored to meet all of you in this venue, not only the project members, but also a number of other experts from regions around the world.

We will have 3 day intensive discussion among all of us, and I am sure that we can develop substantial outcomes towards realizing a long-term environmental conservation of tropical lakes by highlighting Tonle Sap Lake.

5. Appreciation to ITC, TSA, relevant ministries, JICA and JST

Before ending my talk, I would like to express my sincere appreciation to our supporters, Japan International Cooperation Agency, JICA, and Japan Science and Technology Agency, JST, and also the local organizing committee, governmental sectors and all the participants coming a long way to this venue.

From this morning, we are going through 3 intensive days.

I do hope everyone in this hall, including students, will enjoy the coming 3 days of the symposium by actively participating the discussion, enhancing your network, and exploring Tonle Sap Lake and the charming city of Siem Reap.

Thank you very much for your attention.

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