“My ancestors are buried here,” 23-year-old Yem Thavdy points to a spot on the Sesan River, a tributary of the Mekong in Cambodia’s northern province of Stung Treng. She rows the boat across an expanse that was land before the US$781 million Lower Sesan 2 dam flooded it in 2017.
The 400-megawatt hydropower dam, Cambodia’s largest, came online in 2018 and is meant to supply nearly 80% of the capital Phnom Penh’s power. To make it possible, 34,000 hectares of forested land have been flooded, resulting in the relocation of some 2,700 households from seven riverine villages.
Those such as Thavdy who refused government offers of US$6,000, a house and a five-acre plot in a resettlement site have been struggling with losing much of their culture and means of making a living.
“It remains a sacred burial ground for us. We still conduct prayers and give thanks even though the site is under water,” she says, staring blankly at the river. Thavdy claims to know exactly where everything is below the waves.
The project dealt a devastating blow to the traditions of the forest-dwelling Bunong indigenous community to whom Thavdy belongs. Her village of Kbal Romeas was home to about 120 families. Fifty-two opposed the government’s offer of compensation and resettlement about an hour away. Instead, they moved to another piece of land a 30-minute boat ride away, still within the folds of their ancestral land.
Though the Lower Sesan 2 has the potential to provide income and electricity for local communities in the settlement village, the displaced continue to use car batteries to power both their dim light bulbs at night and the occasional radio. For cooking and bathing, they use firewood and water from dug wells. Their livelihoods largely derive from semi-subsistence farming, wild fishing and forest products such as resin, honey and bamboo. A few youngsters have saved enough for smartphones.
Laos and Cambodia have seen a spate of mainstream Mekong and tributary dam projects in recent years – many of which have some level of involvement from Chinese companies. The Lower Sesan 2 project was bankrolled by state-owned China Huaneng Group Ltd, a majority stakeholder of the development. The dam is jointly operated by Cambodian telecommunication tycoon Kith Meng’s The Royal Group, which has 39% equity, and Vietnam Electricity, with 10% interest, via a joint-venture company – Hydro Power Lower Sesan 2 Co Ltd.
The early days of Lower Sesan 2 saw activists taking their complaints to the companies involved, and even to the Chinese embassy. A year after the damming, the Bunong, Brao, Kreung, and Khmer Laos ethnic minorities started to notice the changes, and the communities from Sre Sranok, Sre Pok, Sre Chan, Sre Kor I and Sre Kor II, who lost their homes of several generations, are coming to terms with a lower quality of life.
“We used to be able to catch fish and sell to supplement our livelihood. The big fish have disappeared. The ones caught nowadays are small and only enough to feed our families,” says village head Srang Lanh, who thinks she might be 42 or 43 years old. Lanh rues the loss of native food and convivial life, which, she said, had been taken for granted.
Speaking softly while seated outside her stilted house on a balmy afternoon, she said that some of the native fish such as ta ek (black shark minnow), ros (snakehead murrell) and pra (pengasius hypophthalmus) have disappeared since the dam was built, as they are no longer able to spawn.
Following their separation from the rest of the village in 2017, the community is still vainly hoping the water will one day recede so they can return to their old way of life.
In a study commissioned by the Asian Development Bank in 1999, British engineering consultancy Sir William Halcrow and Partners Ltd called the then-proposed Lower Sesan 2 dam “unattractive” due to its marginal financial viability. The study also expressed concerns about the “extremely heavy environmental and social impacts”, in the words of Ian Baird of the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Nevertheless, the idea was revived in 2007 by Cambodia’s Industry, Mines and Energy Ministry which allowed Vietnam Electricity to conduct a feasibility study.
A 2008 environmental impact assessment (EIA) report from Open Development Canada revealed the potential loss of migratory fish upon which the local communities relied, estimating that 66% such species would be affected by the dam-blocked passageway.