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| Photo by: Adam Miller |
Stung Treng province - KbalL Romea
village sits in an isolated corner of the eponymous district in Stung
Treng province, on the banks of the Sesan River. Livestock roams freely
in the community, while local villagers mill about among the wooden
homes along the river bank.
Residents of Kbal Romea say their way of life has not changed for decades.
But all that may be about to change with the construction of a huge hydropower dam that could have dramatic affects on Kbal Romea and other villages throughout northeastern Cambodia.
District authorities told Kbal Romea resident Na Ram last month that she and her seven children would have to leave the only home they have ever known to make way for the construction of the Lower Sesan 2 dam project at the end of this year.
Na Ram is just one of thous-ands of indigenous people in northeastern Cambodia facing eviction, relocation and an uncertain future as a result of the construction of the dam.
The 39-year-old ethnic Phanong villager struggles with the fact that the community she has lived in since 1973 will soon be flooded and be nothing but a memory.
The families at risk here live in one of the most culturally diverse areas of the country.
The indigenous communities within Stung Treng comprise ethnic minority groups including the Phanong, Jarai, Kroeung, Tompoun, Prov, Kanch Chak and Lao.
One hundred and twenty two families live in Kbal Romea, just below the confluence with the Srepok River in Stung Treng’s Sesan district. It’s a place where residents rely on the river for tasks ranging from bathing to the irrigation of crops and the collection of drinking water.
Most importantly, the river provides a steady supply of fish to villagers in the area, giving them a vital source of nutrients in a region in which food secur-ity is precarious.
The village is just a few hundred metres from the proposed site of the US$816 million, 75-metre high, 420-megawatt Lower Sesan II hydropower dam which, according to a 2009 environmental impact assessment, will cause at least 38,000 people in 86 villages located along two of the largest rivers in the Mekong basin to lose access to the vast majority of their fishing resources.
An additional 87 villages on tributaries of these two rivers in Ratanakkiri, Kratie and Stung Treng provinces may also lose access to migratory fish, according to the EIA.
The Cambodia-Vietnam Hydropower Company – a joint venture 51 per cent owned by the EVNI Joint Stock Company of Vietnam and 49 per cent owned by local conglomerate Royal Group – is due to begin work on the dam later this year.
Ame Trandem, Mekong campaigner for the conservation organisation International Rivers, said EVNI had demonstrated a lack of concern for the welfare of indigenous communities affected by similar dams.
“EVNI has a long legacy of irresponsible and destructive dam-building in the 3S [Sesan, Srepok and Sekong rivers] basin.
“The cascade of dams they have built on the Sesan and Srepok rivers in Vietnam has caused large-scale harm to communities living downstream of its dams in Cambodia,” she said.
The 720MW Yali Falls dam in Vietnam, built by EVNI 80 kilometres upstream of the Cambodian border in 1998, is a similar project suspected of having caused a wide range of environmental problems in the region, Trandem says.
“Water quality has deterior-ated greatly in the Sesan and Srepok rivers over the past decade. The symptoms are mainly gastric disorders and skin eruptions, but respiratory problems have also been reported, along with deaths of villagers and their livestock due to poor water quality,” she says.
Trandern adds that a water- quality testing project in 2009 discovered toxic blue-green algae and E. Coli in the water, which was linked to the dams upstream in Vietnam.
Residents of Kbal Romea say their way of life has not changed for decades.
But all that may be about to change with the construction of a huge hydropower dam that could have dramatic affects on Kbal Romea and other villages throughout northeastern Cambodia.
District authorities told Kbal Romea resident Na Ram last month that she and her seven children would have to leave the only home they have ever known to make way for the construction of the Lower Sesan 2 dam project at the end of this year.
Na Ram is just one of thous-ands of indigenous people in northeastern Cambodia facing eviction, relocation and an uncertain future as a result of the construction of the dam.
The 39-year-old ethnic Phanong villager struggles with the fact that the community she has lived in since 1973 will soon be flooded and be nothing but a memory.
The families at risk here live in one of the most culturally diverse areas of the country.
The indigenous communities within Stung Treng comprise ethnic minority groups including the Phanong, Jarai, Kroeung, Tompoun, Prov, Kanch Chak and Lao.
One hundred and twenty two families live in Kbal Romea, just below the confluence with the Srepok River in Stung Treng’s Sesan district. It’s a place where residents rely on the river for tasks ranging from bathing to the irrigation of crops and the collection of drinking water.
Most importantly, the river provides a steady supply of fish to villagers in the area, giving them a vital source of nutrients in a region in which food secur-ity is precarious.
The village is just a few hundred metres from the proposed site of the US$816 million, 75-metre high, 420-megawatt Lower Sesan II hydropower dam which, according to a 2009 environmental impact assessment, will cause at least 38,000 people in 86 villages located along two of the largest rivers in the Mekong basin to lose access to the vast majority of their fishing resources.
An additional 87 villages on tributaries of these two rivers in Ratanakkiri, Kratie and Stung Treng provinces may also lose access to migratory fish, according to the EIA.
The Cambodia-Vietnam Hydropower Company – a joint venture 51 per cent owned by the EVNI Joint Stock Company of Vietnam and 49 per cent owned by local conglomerate Royal Group – is due to begin work on the dam later this year.
Ame Trandem, Mekong campaigner for the conservation organisation International Rivers, said EVNI had demonstrated a lack of concern for the welfare of indigenous communities affected by similar dams.
“EVNI has a long legacy of irresponsible and destructive dam-building in the 3S [Sesan, Srepok and Sekong rivers] basin.
“The cascade of dams they have built on the Sesan and Srepok rivers in Vietnam has caused large-scale harm to communities living downstream of its dams in Cambodia,” she said.
The 720MW Yali Falls dam in Vietnam, built by EVNI 80 kilometres upstream of the Cambodian border in 1998, is a similar project suspected of having caused a wide range of environmental problems in the region, Trandem says.
“Water quality has deterior-ated greatly in the Sesan and Srepok rivers over the past decade. The symptoms are mainly gastric disorders and skin eruptions, but respiratory problems have also been reported, along with deaths of villagers and their livestock due to poor water quality,” she says.
Trandern adds that a water- quality testing project in 2009 discovered toxic blue-green algae and E. Coli in the water, which was linked to the dams upstream in Vietnam.
Now, experts fear, history may be set to repeat itself with the construction of the Lower Sesan 2.
“Tens of thousands of Cambodians have suffered the environmental, social and econ-omic impacts of its dams for more than a decade,” Trandern says. “These people have yet to receive compensation or a remedy for the impacts.
“EVNI is now repeating its legacy of harm with the Lower Sesan 2 Dam.”
Key Consultants Cambodia (KCC) conducted the EIA for the Lower Sesan 2 dam project in September, 2009, concluding that the dam was likely to flood seven villages in four communes in Stung Treng alone, where at least 4,500 people would have to be resettled.
KCC also stated that at least 78,000 people living upstream of the Lower Sesan 2 dam site were expected to lose access to migratory fish and 1,290 hectares – about 25 per cent of the agricultural land in the Sesan district – would be lost.
KCC executive manager Taing Sophanara raised concerns over the potential impact of the dam at an NGO meeting in 2008.
“Based purely on environmental and particularly social conditions, the project is very questionable,” he said.
Despite concerns by environmentalists and local residents, Environment Minister Mok Mareth said earlier this month the government had extensively researched the impact of the Lower Sesan 2 dam.
Villagers opposed to the project simply could not see the potential benefits of the government’s ongoing development policy, he said.
“The government will relocate villagers who live near the Lower Sesan 2 dam to a new place,” he added.
Choeum Kea, the chief of Kbal Romea village, said villagers would be relocated in December and would receive accommodation comparable with their present housing.
Yet uncertainty over compensation packages has surfaced.
NGO Forum executive director Chhith Sam Ath revealed last month that the Ministry of Economy and Finance was no longer responsible for compensating villagers. That task has fallen to the state power company Electricite du Cambodge.
“It’s confusing. We tried to seek participation in compensation packages from the ministries of Environment and Economy and Finance, then we got a message that the Ministry of Economy and Finance was not responsible,” he said last week, adding that the EDC had not updated him on the situation. EDC officials could not be reached for comment.
Royal Group chairman Kith Meng declined to comment on the project, although in a statement released in April, he said it “will contribute greatly to the continued economic development of Cambodia, ensuring a reliable, moderately priced supply of electricity”.
Yet allegations have also emerged that the Cambodian government plans to sell off the majority of the electricity generated by the Lower Sesan 2 dam – an act that contradicts the potential benefits touted by the project’s organisers.
“This is not about electricity for Cambodia. It is not about reducing the cost of electricity in Cambodia,” Dr Ian Baird, a fisheries expert and geography professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison said.
“Maybe a very small amount of electricity they might use around Stung Treng, but it would be less than one per cent,” Baird said.
He said the province could likely be powered by just 1MW of energy and Cambodia’s lack of a power grid would prevent electricity from the project being distributed nationwide until a grid had been built.
Amid concerns locally about the effect of the dam and its questionable benefit for Cambodia, Arne Trandem says the effects of the dam will also be felt in the neighbouring countries of Vietnam and Laos.
The project, she says, may stifle agricultural development in the region, because the Sesan, Srepok and Sekong rivers supply about 10 per cent of the Mekong River’s sediment.
“The dam will … hinder sediment flow, which carries nutrients responsible for the Mekong’s rich fish productivity and works as an important natural fertiliser for Cambodia’s flood plains and Vietnam’s Mekong Delta,” Trandem says.
Sai Bun Pom, a community representative for the Kbal Romea commune, said villagers in the area would find it difficult to imagine life after the dam’s construction.
“We will face a shortage of food, and our standard of living will be poor,” he said.
“We would rather live in the village and watch it flood until we die, than move out of the village. The river is our life – we cannot move away from the river.”
“Tens of thousands of Cambodians have suffered the environmental, social and econ-omic impacts of its dams for more than a decade,” Trandern says. “These people have yet to receive compensation or a remedy for the impacts.
“EVNI is now repeating its legacy of harm with the Lower Sesan 2 Dam.”
Key Consultants Cambodia (KCC) conducted the EIA for the Lower Sesan 2 dam project in September, 2009, concluding that the dam was likely to flood seven villages in four communes in Stung Treng alone, where at least 4,500 people would have to be resettled.
KCC also stated that at least 78,000 people living upstream of the Lower Sesan 2 dam site were expected to lose access to migratory fish and 1,290 hectares – about 25 per cent of the agricultural land in the Sesan district – would be lost.
KCC executive manager Taing Sophanara raised concerns over the potential impact of the dam at an NGO meeting in 2008.
“Based purely on environmental and particularly social conditions, the project is very questionable,” he said.
Despite concerns by environmentalists and local residents, Environment Minister Mok Mareth said earlier this month the government had extensively researched the impact of the Lower Sesan 2 dam.
Villagers opposed to the project simply could not see the potential benefits of the government’s ongoing development policy, he said.
“The government will relocate villagers who live near the Lower Sesan 2 dam to a new place,” he added.
Choeum Kea, the chief of Kbal Romea village, said villagers would be relocated in December and would receive accommodation comparable with their present housing.
Yet uncertainty over compensation packages has surfaced.
NGO Forum executive director Chhith Sam Ath revealed last month that the Ministry of Economy and Finance was no longer responsible for compensating villagers. That task has fallen to the state power company Electricite du Cambodge.
“It’s confusing. We tried to seek participation in compensation packages from the ministries of Environment and Economy and Finance, then we got a message that the Ministry of Economy and Finance was not responsible,” he said last week, adding that the EDC had not updated him on the situation. EDC officials could not be reached for comment.
Royal Group chairman Kith Meng declined to comment on the project, although in a statement released in April, he said it “will contribute greatly to the continued economic development of Cambodia, ensuring a reliable, moderately priced supply of electricity”.
Yet allegations have also emerged that the Cambodian government plans to sell off the majority of the electricity generated by the Lower Sesan 2 dam – an act that contradicts the potential benefits touted by the project’s organisers.
“This is not about electricity for Cambodia. It is not about reducing the cost of electricity in Cambodia,” Dr Ian Baird, a fisheries expert and geography professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison said.
“Maybe a very small amount of electricity they might use around Stung Treng, but it would be less than one per cent,” Baird said.
He said the province could likely be powered by just 1MW of energy and Cambodia’s lack of a power grid would prevent electricity from the project being distributed nationwide until a grid had been built.
Amid concerns locally about the effect of the dam and its questionable benefit for Cambodia, Arne Trandem says the effects of the dam will also be felt in the neighbouring countries of Vietnam and Laos.
The project, she says, may stifle agricultural development in the region, because the Sesan, Srepok and Sekong rivers supply about 10 per cent of the Mekong River’s sediment.
“The dam will … hinder sediment flow, which carries nutrients responsible for the Mekong’s rich fish productivity and works as an important natural fertiliser for Cambodia’s flood plains and Vietnam’s Mekong Delta,” Trandem says.
Sai Bun Pom, a community representative for the Kbal Romea commune, said villagers in the area would find it difficult to imagine life after the dam’s construction.
“We will face a shortage of food, and our standard of living will be poor,” he said.
“We would rather live in the village and watch it flood until we die, than move out of the village. The river is our life – we cannot move away from the river.”
Phnom Penh Post
Martin David Kent required only an hour to land a 260-pound Mekong giant catfish late last November, but it took seven months for the impressive catch, made in Thailand, to be approved as a world record.
The International Game Fish Assn., after an unusually long authentication period, recognized the catch last week in its all-tackle category. That means it's the biggest of the species in the record book (the IGFA also lists line-class records). Asked what took so long, IGFA worldf records coordinator Jack Vitek explained: "For international claims there is a 90-day minimum wait period, from the catch date.
In this particular case, we required written testimonies from the angler and witnesses – which took some time." Welsh angler Kent, 54, did not require approval, of course, to realize he had landed a true behemoth. Surprisingly, Kent hooked the whopper on a mere piece of sweet corn.
After being weighed and photographed, the fish was released to fight another day. "I usually catch bass weighing four or five pounds off the Pembrokeshire coast so this [fish] was a bit bigger than I'm used to," Kent told WalesOnline. He had been fishing at Gillhams Fishing Resorts in Krabi, Thailand.
The catch shatters the previous all-tackle record, a 191-pound specimen caught at the same location in 2009, by Joseph Stewart Ball. Mekong giant catfish are endemic to the Mekong River and the wild population is critically endangered because of overfishing and degradation of habitat (dams, runoff, etc.). River fishing for the giants is banned in Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, but poaching is widespread.
Thailand allows fishing in lakes in which fry or small catfish have been stocked via government or private hatchery programs. This has no impact on the wild fishery. Gillhams Fishing Resorts utilizes a nine-acre lake and plants two species of catfish purchased from a Thailand fish farm.
The fish apparently grow to remarkable sizes within the expanse of the reservoir. "This is a lake I created from a swamp, and due to the habitat I built into the lake the fish certainly do grow here," said Stuart Gillham, the owner. "I have had Mekongs put on 100 pounds in 13 months and arapaima, which I breed myself, with the same weight gains."
The largest known giant Mekong catfish was a 646-pounder netted from the Mekong River in 2005 by local fishermen. It's believed to be the largest freshwater fish ever recorded. It didn't qualify as an angling record, naturally, because of the manner by which it was caught.
-- Photo shows Martin David Kent (left) and companions he enlisted to help display the 260-pound giant Mekong catfish. Courtesy of Gillhams Fishing Resorts
The survival of some of the world’s largest freshwater fish — including a giant catfish — is threatened by a series of hydro-power dams planned for the Mekong River, a leading environmental group has warned.
The construction of a particular dam in northern Laos would disrupt the
migration of four of the world’s top ten largest freshwater species to
crucial spawning grounds, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said.
In its report River Giants: Giant Fish of the Mekong, WWF said the catfish that grow up to 350kgs (772lbs) and freshwater stringray that can weigh in at 600kgs (1,320lbs), would be threatened with extinction if the plans go-ahead.
China has already completed four hydro-power dams on the Mekong, while another 11 are being built or planned in Laos, Thailand and Cambodia. Other smaller dams are proposed along its tributaries.
The Mekong is south-east Asia’s longest river, rising in Tibet and flowing through southern China, Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam before reaching the South China Sea.
But WWF’s most pressing concern in the hydropower plant planned for Sayabouly province, in Laos, which boasts ambitious plans to supply electricity to south-east Asia in an effort to become the “battery” of the region.
The elusive giant catfish swims from Cambodia’s Tonle Sap Lake up the Mekong to breed in Laos and northern Thailand.
“A fish the size of a Mekong giant catfish simply will not be able to swim across a large barrier like a dam to reach its spawning grounds upstream,” said Roger Mollot, a freshwater biologist for WWF in Laos.
Yet the river plays also host to a many unique fish including the vast stingray — the world’s biggest freshwater fish — a giant barb and dog-eating catfish, so-called because of its pension for dog carcasses.
“More giant fish live in the Mekong than any other river on earth,” said Dang Thuy Trang, co-ordinator for WWF’s Greater Mekong Programme.
“Currently, the lower Mekong remains free-flowing, which presents a rare opportunity for the conservation of these species, but the clock is ticking.”
The plans for the new dam are currently under scrutiny by the Mekong River Commission — an international body made up of Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. But WWF is urging it to veto the plan on the grounds of its effects on the wildlife, fishing and agriculture in the region.
The Telegraph
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| A Cambodian fisherman holds a bag loaded with fish from the Mekong River on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, Cambodia (FILE). |
Laos says it will conduct new research on the environmental effects
of a hydropower dam it wants to build on the lower Mekong River, bowing
to requests from neighboring nations for more study on the project.
Daovong Phonekeo, the deputy director general of the country's Department of Electricity, said Tuesday the country will hire advisers to do the study, and will ask a Thai construction company that is playing a leading role in the project to fund the study.
He says construction work on the project will be delayed for the study.
The Xayaburi dam will be the first hydropower dam on the lower reaches of the river, although China has built dams on the upper stretches of the river.
Last month, at the Mekong River Commission, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand, which the Mekong also flows through, asked for more information on the dam's possible effects on wildlife, fish stocks and farming along the river.
Daovong Phonekeo, the deputy director general of the country's Department of Electricity, said Tuesday the country will hire advisers to do the study, and will ask a Thai construction company that is playing a leading role in the project to fund the study.
He says construction work on the project will be delayed for the study.
The Xayaburi dam will be the first hydropower dam on the lower reaches of the river, although China has built dams on the upper stretches of the river.
Last month, at the Mekong River Commission, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand, which the Mekong also flows through, asked for more information on the dam's possible effects on wildlife, fish stocks and farming along the river.
Vietnam has asked that all planned hydropower dams on the river be
delayed for 10 years for further study. The commission, which aims to
build a regional consensus for sustainable development of the river,
does not have the power to block any dam projects.
Laos plans to build a series of dams on the river to generate electricity, which it can sell to other countries. Thailand earlier had agreed to buy 95 percent of the power from the project.
About 60 million people depend on the Mekong directly or indirectly for their livelihoods. Environmental groups, including the WWF, have expressed concern that dams on the Mekong could endanger rare fish and wildlife, and could damage farms along the 4,800-kilometer river.
The WWF on Tuesday urged that international best practices be used in any studies to evaluate the dam's effects.
Laos plans to build a series of dams on the river to generate electricity, which it can sell to other countries. Thailand earlier had agreed to buy 95 percent of the power from the project.
About 60 million people depend on the Mekong directly or indirectly for their livelihoods. Environmental groups, including the WWF, have expressed concern that dams on the Mekong could endanger rare fish and wildlife, and could damage farms along the 4,800-kilometer river.
The WWF on Tuesday urged that international best practices be used in any studies to evaluate the dam's effects.
Source: VOA News
