CAMBODIA'S SAMBOR DAM PLANS CAUSE CONTROVERSY AS PUBLIC LEFT IN THE DARK

CAMBODIA'S SAMBOR DAM PLANS CAUSE CONTROVERSY AS PUBLIC LEFT IN THE DARK

"If the dam is built, it will be like before, in the time of the Khmer Rouge
when we all had to move," said Plau Saret, 44, of Domrae Village on the
Mekong River island of Koh Tnaot, right next to the proposed Sambor Dam
site. In 2011, she and her husband built a new house. Then, a few years ago,
she saw Chinese surveyors digging in the river.

The Sambor Dam is one of Cambodia's priority energy projects, according to
the country's "Master plan for the development of energy generation." This
plan was a well-kept secret until two pages from it appeared Feb. 17 in a
snapshot posted on the Facebook page of Phay Siphan, a government spokesman.

The plan posted by Siphan states the Sambor Dam will be completed in three
stages from 2025-2027, with a total power output of 1,800 megawatts.
Attempts by Mongabay to get government comments on the plan were not
answered and few details are yet known about the proposed scheme.

The dam, in Kratie province, is the biggest of Cambodia's three proposed
mainstream Mekong dams. It has been on the drawing board for over a decade,
but final plans do not yet appear to be in place. Last month, the Cambodia
Daily reported that in October 2016 the cabinet greenlighted feasibility
studies for the Sambor and two other proposed dams, but as yet there has
been no confirmation that the Ministry of Mines and Energy has signed on.

It's unclear who will undertake construction work, but Cambodian business
tycoon Kith Meng, chairman of The Royal Group, was in February announced as
the Cambodian partner. According to rights group Global Witness, Meng is,
"known for involvement in land grabbing and illegal logging." Global Witness
also found that the Prime Minister's daughter, Hun Mana "is a director and
shareholder in Royal Group Investment Company."

The cost of the dam

Back in 2008, dam builder China Southern Power Grid released the original
feasibility study for the Sambor Dam. It put forward three different dam
options with differing locations, electricity outputs and reservoir sizes.
The favored option, they said, "would have an installed capacity of 2,600
MW, and a dam over 18 km long and 56 m high." China Southern Power Grid's
original cost estimate for project exceeded US$5 billion.

Along with the inundation of the riverbank, four inhabited islands in the
mainstream would be submerged. This would force the relocation of over
19,000 people making it by far the greatest displacement of people of any
Cambodian dam - either constructed or planned.

In 2011, China Southern Power Grid withdrew from the project after protests
from villagers who feared their fisheries would be destroyed. "CSG is a
responsible company," a spokesman told reporters.

Suong, a commune head on Tnaot Island, fled the Khmer Rouge genocide to the
island in 1979 to seek protection from the invading Vietnamese forces. His
commune had made a collective decision to flee and found the island, one of
four in the river, uninhabited.

Now 64, Suong said it was tough work clearing the dense tropical forest to
barter wood for rice, and that in the early days many contracted malaria. He
recounted tales of the extraordinarily rich biodiversity, with tiger and
deer sightings on the island and the clear, flowing river teeming with fish.

They fished for crocodile catfish (Bagarius suchus) with their bare hands,
pulling them out of the water, he recalled. Not the only ones to plunder
this bounty, they shared the river with Irrawaddy dolphin (Orcaella
brevirostris) and Siamese crocodiles (Crocodylus siamensis).

Suong told folk-tales laden with animist superstition which highlighted the
reverence, fear and respect that people then had for the natural world. He
also described how people still revere the dolphin, regarding it as a lucky
omen.

Now multiple pressures from population growth, modern technology and
pollution are placing strains on the local ecosystem.

Fishers like Nous Sokaum said their catches have plummeted over the past
three years. Sokaum said his typical daily catch used to be 100-200
kilograms per day. "Now I am lucky to catch five kilograms in two or three
hours," he said. Although their explanations differed there were common
themes, especially illegal fishing and, in particular, the use high-voltage
electrodes to stun and kill fish.

Villagers speculated that the decline in fish stocks could also be due to
the impacts of dams already constructed upstream in Laos and China, which
appear to be affecting the river. Kaeng Khin of Kampong Rote village on
Rongeav island explained that, "everyone expected water levels to rise in
the rainy season, but not in the dry season," as she had experienced several
times.

Experts are in agreement that a much bigger threat is on the horizon if the
Sambor Dam goes ahead. According to a 2015 study by WorldFish and CGIAR, the
Mekong is home to 781 fish species, making it one of the world's most
biodiverse rivers and an essential source of food security for the river
basin. It also found that many of the river's 165 migratory fish species
would be impacted by the dams, causing fish yields to collapse.

According to the Cambodian Fisheries Administration, the Sambor Dam alone is
predicted to reduce yields of fish and other aquatic animals by 16 percent
to 30 percent.

The proposed dam site is also home to nine of around 90 Irrawaddy dolphins
still estimated by WWF to live in the Mekong. These dolphins are already
threatened by illegal fishing equipment like gill nets, said WWF Country
Director Chhith Sam Ath. "Last year six dolphins died, but this was a
reduction compared with 2015 when there were nine deaths," he said. If the
dam is built, Sam Ath thinks it is unlikely the remaining dolphins would
survive.

Changes to the river's ecology won't just affect local aquatic life. The
Mekong provides nutrients for fish all the way down the river and even feeds
sea fish as the sediment plumes beyond the Vietnamese delta.

The sediment feeds the land, too.

Plau Saret, 44, described how during the rainy season the river rises,
flooding large parts of Tnaot island. "My rice fields get flooded," she
said. The silt deposited on her fields renewed the nutrients and led to a
better rice crop, she explained, while her husband, Leurn Sittar, was
tilling his vegetable gardens on the banks of the river both to make use of
the rich alluvial sediment left behind in the soil. These precious sediment
deposits are stopped by dams, instead settling in dam reservoirs.

Nous Sokaum, 66, is a member of the village council on the Island of Koh
Real. Around ten years ago, he said, Chinese surveyors placed a concrete
marker near his house to mark the dam site. Despite the apparent threat to
his property, he remains positive about development in general. He said he
agreed with fellow party members from the governing CPP who told him the dam
"would be a good thing because it would provide a bridge across the river."

Forest campaigners find this bridge a worrying prospect. On the west side of
the river is the Prey Long forest, the most biologically important lowland
forest remaining in Cambodia. According to forestry consultant Marcus
Hardtke, previous dam projects unleashed a stampede of government-sanctioned
logging to clear reservoir sites and usually this extended far beyond the
reservoir boundary.

Civil society kept in the dark

In 2013, the Cambodian Government hired the Los Angeles-based National
Heritage Institute (NHI) to review hydropower generation options for the
Sambor project. "NHI has assessed 10 alternative sites, designs, scales and
operations including the originally proposed 2600 MW," the institute's CEO
Gregory Thomas said by email. "[Five] ministries and many departments of the
[Royal Cambodian Government] were briefed on the results of the assessment
in December. The narrative report is forthcoming," Thomas added.

"We heard of them [NHI], but they haven't contacted us yet," said WWF's
Chhith Sam Ath. He questions the assessment's legitimacy: "If NHI is not
going to do a consultation, in a participatory manner with stakeholders,
then it's wrong. It's not actually representing the voice of people, or
civil society, or community people in this area."

With feasibility studies routinely withheld by the Government, civil society
is keen that the NHI assessment is shared publically. However, Thomas
explained that for now, "we are honoring the request of the RGC [Royal
Cambodian Government] to limit distribution of the results of this
assessment."

According to Thomas, "The reticence of the RGC officials is based on their
fear that critiques from the NGOs will be neither technically competent nor
constructive. Is that well-founded? We have already seen some of them
propagating uninformed speculation in lieu of facts."

Founding Director of Mother Nature Cambodia Alejandro Gonzalez-Davidson
criticized the NHI for its involvement in the Sambor project at a time when
the Ministry of Mines and Energy is being questioned regarding a
multi-million dollar corruption scandal, and governments and NGOs give the
country poor marks for corruption.

"I find it extremely alarming that an organization that is funded by
taxpayers money from the US is shaking hands with the Ministry of Mines and
Energy," Gonzalez-Davidson said. "This should not be a conversation about
energy and electricity generation, it should be a conversation about how not
to allow these gangsters [in the government] to go ahead with this new
scheme - and destroy one of Cambodia's most vital assets, the Mekong River."

He is concerned that by engaging with the Government the NHI is lending
legitimacy to the project. "This is something that the MME really wants.
It's all about green-washing their project," he said.

Meanwhile, lack of information is a common complaint from villagers on
islands that would be submerged if the original dam site is chosen. Most
people had heard of the dam, often through NGO activities, but they were
less certain about what the impacts would be: whether their land would be
submerged, or even whether they would have to move out the way. If so, they
did not know where they would have to go and whether they would receive
compensation.

"There are four communes on Koh Tnaot island but only this one seems to care
about the dam," said Dung Sofu Eun, headman of Kampong Rote said. "I went to
talk to other communes but the authorities were not really open. Even in
commune meetings they don't speak about the dam. I'm very concerned that we
don't have enough information."

On Rongeav Island, Kaeng Khin said that when she ventured to a gathering in
Phnom Penh to advocate for sustainable energy, her sister got a visit from
eight policemen asking what Khin was up to. Khin said that her sister felt
intimidated so paid them a considerable bribe to go away and leave her
family alone - money that Khin repaid and for which she says she is now in
debt. Khin reported the incident to human rights groups, but Mongabay was
not able to independently verify her claim.

Gonzalez-Davidson - who in 2015 was deported for campaigning against the
Areng dam - regards intimidation tactics as a familiar state ploy to push
through infrastructure schemes: "Every single relevant state agency will
lobby on behalf of the dam and most shockingly, they will try to stymie all
efforts by activists, communities, and NGOs who are trying to stop the dam."

Exploring alternative solutions

NGOs believe that some of the options being explored by NHI include dams
which only partially block the river to supposedly allow sediment flow and
migration. But Maureen Harris, Southeast Asia Program Director at
International Rivers had misgivings: "We are not aware of evidence that
these serious impacts can be effectively mitigated and these concerns have
been expressed again and again including in the MRCs strategic assessment."

The weight of evidence against the dam has led NHI to look into other
alternatives. Thomas from NHI confirmed that a floating solar array on the
Lower Sesan 2 reservoir is being explored as one of the "no dam" options
that are part of their comparative assessment, which "will be completed by
the end of 2017," Thomas said. Floating array technology has attracted
attention as a way of increasing reservoir efficiency because the floating
solar panels deflect heat, so reducing evaporation.

"We have measured our land and registered it with the commune head," said
Plau Sareth. She explained that it might help to prove the extent of their
land if they ever need to claim compensation. She plans to complain about
the dam. "I am not sure if we will win and people don't have a lot of
knowledge or confidence that they will win against the government," she
said, but many of the Mekong islanders who Mongabay spoke to said that they
are against the dam and will try to stop it.

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Link to Original Article:
https://news.mongabay.com/2017/03/cambodias-sambor-dam-plans-cause-controver
sy-as-public-left-in-the-dark/

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John Diecker
APT Consulting Group Co., Ltd.

www.aptthailand.com