Pulling the plug on power in Cambodia

Pulling the plug on power in Cambodia

The cityscape of Phnom Penh resembles a work in progress. On a strip of land
marking the cross-section of the Mekong and Tonle Sap rivers, a new hotel
under construction and empty plots face the centuries-old Royal Palace.

Nowadays, restaurants and nightclubs come packed with tourists in the
capital city. Around them, signs of construction abound, with steel bars and
cement blocks piled up on footpaths everywhere.

"Four years ago, it looked nothing like this," said Chenda, a hotel owner
who goes by a fake name. We were standing on the rooftop restaurant of the
five-storey hotel he runs, complete with a shiny terraced pool area.

"You see that?" he says, pointing to the sprawling commercial plots below.
"It will be a real city soon."

A crop of modern buildings has sprung up in the past five years in Phnom
Penh. The construction of roads, malls and high-rise residences has become a
ubiquitous sight.

According to the Council for Development of Cambodia, China is the country's
biggest source of foreign direct investment.

Despite a global economic slowdown, the country's gross domestic product has
grown at a rapid average of 7% since 2011. The tourism market is growing
rapidly too, with the number of tourist arrivals tripling between 2006 and
last year.

This opening in the market gave Chenda the chance to reinvent his life, many
years of which he spent under the Cambodian-Vietnamese War and the civil
war.

Cambodia finally became peaceful in the late 1990s, but the unrest didn't
end there.

Achieving economic growth under Prime Minister Hun Sen poses a new challenge
for today's Cambodia. The contentious leader has played a large role in
developing the electricity sector.

"Power is the most important sector. How can you run a bank or a company if
you don't have electricity?" said Chenda. "Here, you'll never know when
power will be cut off, even in a central area like where we're standing
now."

The Minister of Industry, Mines and Energy (MIME) reported that only 22% of
Cambodian households have access to electricity.

Power imported from neighbouring countries -- Vietnam, Thailand and Laos --
accounted for 25% of total supply in 2015, decreasing from 61% in 2010.

This figure is the outcome of Cambodia's mass power plant building project,
which has focused on hydropower dams, holding a 43% share of domestic
generation.

Since 2011, eight dams have been built across the country. Six involve
management or funding by Chinese companies.

The current energy supply won't be sufficient to keep up with a growing
demand. MIME projects that electricity demand will rise to a growth rate of
18.3% per year.

Power consumption in the service sector has increased more rapidly than any
other sector in Cambodia.

Some argue that the project's benefits are being spread unevenly. Phnom
Penh, for example, takes up at least 80% of the country's overall
electricity consumption.

Hydropower dams in remote villages mainly provide for the capital city.
Civil society groups have reported a range of adverse effects from these
developments, from community displacement to damage done to local
livelihoods and the environment.

In the year leading up to the next general election and amid rampant
crackdowns on anti-government activists, the people left in the dark are
being rendered silent too.

POWER PLAY

Growth in the electricity sector has helped the ruling Cambodian People's
Party (CPP) gain support.

In "Political Ecology of Chinese Large dams in Cambodia", a study published
in the Switzerland-based Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
journal last year, it was determined that the building of the Chinese-funded
Kamchay Dam forged closer political ties between China and Cambodia.

The launching of the dam helped secure Cambodia as China's political ally,
leading to such decisions as opting out of Asean's collective statement on
the South China Sea conflict.

The Kamchay Dam is Cambodia's first hydropower dam and has been operating
since 2011. The dam was built with US$600 million in aid from the United
States alongside a trade and investment package from China's ExIm Bank.

The study found that the majority of electricity generated in the country
provided for Phnom Penh, while many houses neighbouring the dam did not have
any access to electricity.

During Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Cambodia last year, he
pledged $600 million in aid to Cambodia over the next three years. The
country's economy is majorly benefiting from China's investment capital,
worth $864 million and $4.4 billion from bilateral trade in 2015.

The figures make Cambodia's economic future look bright. But some say the
political consequences are problematic, lending more credibility to the CPP,
who won the general election in 2013 amid accusations of election fraud.

As Cambodia braces itself for a general election next year and local
elections this June, the crackdowns on activists and opposition figures have
intensified, inciting accusations of the violation of human rights and
freedom of expression.

In May last year, the Black Monday movement launched an anti-government
protest after authorities arrested four members of the human rights group
Adhoc and an election official for allegedly bribing a woman to stay silent
on a sex scandal case involving Kem Sokha, the deputy leader of the
opposition Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP).

Meanwhile, CNRP leader Sam Rainsy has been targeted by the CPP on a series
of criminal charges. The accusations made Rainsy go into self-imposed exile
in France.

Hun Sen recently revealed that he would have the court seize Rainsy's
property in Cambodia, one of several examples of the state ordering the
court to punish opposition figures.

In another case, environmental activists Try Sovikea, Sun Mala and Sim
Samnang from the NGO Mother Nature were sentenced last year to 18 months
imprisonment for threatening to destroy property while protesting sand
dredging in Koh Kong province. They were released early after having served
the sufficient time in their pretrial detention, according to Amnesty
International.

Environmental activists are regularly threatened in Cambodia.

Speaking at the 2015 inauguration of the 246-megawatt hydropower Steung
Tatay Dam in Koh Kong province, Hun Sen threatened to cut off electricity
from the households of any environmental activists who protested about the
government's dam projects.

He referred to them as "environmental extremists who oppose everything".

"Dams represent the control of political power," said Tek Vannara, executive
director of the NGO Forum on Cambodia. "But maybe economic development will
change in the next 10 years so that we may not need to build mega dams like
today."

Open Development Cambodia, an online data hub, indicates that 65 hydropower
dams are connected to Cambodian pipelines. At least seven have been
developed by Chinese companies.

CHANGING TIDES

A crumbling statue of a smiley Irrawaddy dolphin in Stung Treng province's
Preah Romkil village faces the Mekong River at the Cambodia-Laos border.

Looking over at Lao territory, just two kilometres from Cambodia's river
bank, the construction work surrounding the 260-megawatt Don Sahong Dam is
visible.

Don Sahong is the second mainstream dam built on Laos' slice of the Mekong.
Its construction was launched in 2015 following the building of the
controversial Xayaburi Dam, which some speculated was built without impact
assessments.

A school of Irrawaddy dolphins swims through the water, their fins bobbing
up and down. Tourist boats float by on their dolphin watching adventures.

"Villagers here benefit from the dolphin tours," said Lok Chanthou, 50, a
core leader of the Preah Romkil community. "We run a community-based
ecotourist project for dolphin watching and the business helps us survive."

In 2007, the villagers formed a dolphin watching tour committee. Tourists
mostly come from Laos or neighbouring countries.

However, the dam construction currently under way could jeopardise their
business by disrupting the dolphins' habitats. Locals are concerned it will
drain the area of its tourist appeal.

It's expected that the Don Sahong Dam, developed by the Malaysia-based Mega
First Corporation Berhad and the government of Laos, will generate
electricity to be sold to Cambodia and Thailand.

The project has been in the works since 2006. American NGO International
River reported that China's Sinohydro International Co-operation, which also
built Kamchay Dam, was contracted to construct the project.

The project was criticised for failing to engage with locals' concerns and
the lack of trans-boundary impact assessments done, despite the Lao
government's insistence that it has.

Last year the Phnom Penh Post reported that Prime Minister Hun Sen made a
Facebook post stating: "After Cambodia inspected the situation, it does not
have a problem with the dam development project."

He thanked Laos for its pledge to sell low-cost electricity to Cambodian
provinces nearby the dam.

Critics say China's involvement in the dam's construction could be
influencing Hun Sen's treatment of the issue.

Some speculate that the Don Sahong Dam project could inflict major
trans-boundary effects, including a change in water flow that could damage
ecology and fish habitats. According to the World Wildlife Fund, the Mekong
River's Irrawaddy dolphins are close to extinction. It's estimated that
around only 78 to 91 remain in the river in various parts of Cambodia and
Laos.

"The dam will benefit other cities," said Lok, the community leader. "For
communities living close to the dam, we are victims of the project."

THE ROAD AHEAD

For Yen Wut, a 55-year-old who experienced the brutality of the Khmer Rouge
regime first hand, the idea of a booming Cambodian economy was previously
unfathomable.

In 1979, he was evicted by force from Preah Romkil village after the Khmer
Rouge moved into the area. He witnessed people being tied and beaten. Only
100 metres away from his home, he heard about women being raped at a
militants' camp.

In 1991, when peace began to be restored, Yen Wut moved back to his village
and resumed his livelihood working in the rice fields. Occasionally, he did
trade with Lao people.

As the market gradually shifted towards tourism, he too changed his
agricultural practice. Now he works for a local tourism committee.

"After the war, our life was incredibly challenging because of the change in
soil [left degraded by the fighting, land mines and deforestation]. I
couldn't imagine my country building itself back up again," he said.

"But the picture is so different today. I never expected that I would have
the career I have now."

However, the Don Sahong Dam could pose a threat to his success.

Meanwhile, the government is building Lower Se San 2 Dam on the Mekong
tributary called Se San River, located 35km downstream from Yen Wut's
village.

The project is a joint venture between the Royal Group of Cambodia and
China's HydroLancang International Energy.

His village doesn't have electricity yet.

While travelling from Phnom Penh to Preah Romkil, we stopped at several
small communities which didn't have any electricity. Some families depended
on a small solar panel. Several local farmers told us they earned around two
to five US dollars per day.

A Phnom Penh office worker told me that his office paid a steep $120 per
month for a freezer and three air conditioners that were not even in regular
use.

The city faces occasional blackouts. These are particularly bad during the
dry season when power consumption is at its peak.

"We rely on our neighbours a lot. Maybe the reason why the government is
building all these dams is because the country has to learn to sustain
itself," said Chenda.

"From my point of view, I think there are two sides of the coin. We have to
plan our development carefully. People need energy. But at the same time
hydropower dams can have environmental and social costs."

Three days after I met Chenda, his wife sent me a message requesting I use a
fake name for him in my article. She said she was concerned about him, an
established businessman, being targeted for criticising Hun Sen's
government.

As we sit on the rooftop that day, he told me a dream of his.

"I want to see everywhere in Cambodia look just like Norodom Boulevard. It's
a main road with beautiful trees, a beautiful walkway -- a beautiful road. I
want to see all the roads look like that. We must all aspire to this dream."

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Link to Original Article:
http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/special-reports/1236942/pulling-the-plug-on-
power-in-cambodia

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John Diecker
APT Consulting Group Co., Ltd.

www.aptthailand.com