A massive Chinese-financed dam in Cambodia has “washed away the livelihoods” of tens of thousands of villagers while falling short of promised energy production, Human Rights Watch said yesterday.
The 400 megawatt Lower Sesan 2 dam in the kingdom’s northeast has sparked controversy since long before its December 2018 launch.
Fisheries experts had warned that damming the confluence of the Sesan and Srepok rivers — two major tributaries of the resource-rich Mekong river — would threaten fish stocks crucial to millions of people living along the Mekong’s flood plains.
Photo: AFP
Tens of thousands of people living in villages upstream and downstream have had steep losses of incomes, Human Rights Watch said in a report, citing interviews conducted over two years.
“The Lower Sesan 2 dam washed away the livelihoods of Indigenous and ethnic minority communities who previously lived communally and mostly self-sufficiently from fishing, forest-gathering and agriculture,” said the report’s author, Human Rights Watch Asia advocacy director John Sifton. “Cambodian authorities need to urgently revisit this project’s compensation, resettlement and livelihood-restoration methods.”
“There’s no doubt at all that [the dam] contributed significantly to the larger problems the Mekong is facing right now,” said Brian Eyler, a Mekong energy and water expert.
The Cambodian government had pushed ahead with the project in hopes of producing about one-sixth of Cambodia’s annual electricity needs.
However, production levels are “likely far lower, amounting to only a third of those levels,” the report said.
Government spokesman Phay Siphan said that the dam provided “the most positive impacts” and that resettled villagers have new homes, land and electricity.
“The allegations are not reasonable, they don’t look at Cambodian experiences,” Phay Siphan said.
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