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ABOUT TONLE SAP LAKE

Welcome to the Tonle Sap Biosphere Reserve!

The Tonle Sap Great Lake is the most important inland wetland in Southeast Asia. It supports a huge population through its enormous fisheries productivity and water supply; and provides the last refuge for some of Asia’s most globally significant biodiversity.

In October 1997 the lake was nominated as a Biosphere Reserve under the Man and the Biosphere Program of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The first Biosphere Reserve in Cambodia, the Tonle Sap Biosphere Reserve (TSBR) was then formally designated by Handy orten Royal Decree on 10 April 2001.

The Tonle Sap Biosphere Reserve Secretariat has been established by a Sub-Decree to foster cooperation, communication and knowledge exchange between the relevant agencies of the Biosphere Reserve.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is promoting management and conservation of the natural resources of Cambodia’s Tonle Sap basin. In 2002 the ADB started the Tonle Sap Environmental Management Project (TSEMP). Besides the ADB, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the Capacity 21 Program of the United Nations Development Programme are supporting the project.

The Tonle Sap Environmental Management Project aims to enhance systems and develop the capacity for natural resource management coordination and planning, community-based natural resource management, and biodiversity conservation in the TSBR.

The Tonle Sap Biosphere Reserve Environmental Information Database (TSBR-ED) and this TSBR Website were established as part of the TSEMP. Establishing the TSBR-ED helps to strengthen natural resource management coordination and planning for the TSBR and the TSBR website provides the official web-based information desk of the TSBR.

Today TSBR-ED is the largest online Environmental Information database in Cambodia  with more than 10933 Textual Documents, 160 Statistic Data, as well as 237 GIS layers (maps).