Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
they'll lose theirs.” A similar situation exists in Mondulkiri province to the south and
Stung Treng to the west—two other provinces with sizeable ethnic minority populations.
Another threat in the northeast is hydropower. The Lower Sesan 2 Dam, an $800 mil-
lion project now under construction at the confluence of the Sesan and Srepok Rivers in
Stung Treng, is set to displace around 5,000 mostly minority people. The Lower Sesan 2
project is just one of more than a dozen dams planned as part of a government policy to
harness the power of the country's rivers and export electricity to Thailand and Vietnam.
While hydropower can be a vital spur to development, environmentalists say the govern-
ment's dam-building drive is ill-considered and threatens to damage Cambodia's teeming
fisheries, which provide the country with 80 percent of its animal protein.
Much of the threat to Cambodia's fisheries comes from Chinese and Laotian dam de-
velopments upstream on the Mekong. But as Cambodia moves to develop its own dams,
the effects of distant dam projects could well be magnified closer to home. In the case
of the Lower Sesan 2 project, donors have already called for a redesign after an environ-
mental impact assessment found it would trigger changes in hydrology and water quality
and cut off access to migratory fish for tens of thousands of people living along the river
in Stung Treng and Ratanakkiri. Effects will also be felt downstream. By one estimate,
the government appears set to press ahead with the Lower Sesan 2 project and several
others, including some on the Mekong mainstream itself.
In an air-conditioned office across town, the governor of Ratanakkiri arranged his three
smartphones in a neat stack on the desk as he launched into an address on the subject of
Hun Sen's national development policy. Pao Ham Phan wore tailored black pajamas with
a gold pen peeking from the breast pocket. On one finger was a gold ring with a large
green gemstone, and he wore thin-rimmed gold glasses which he adjusted now and then
as he recited his catechism of progress. In recent years, he said, indigenous people have
gone from living in traditional homes and practicing rotating cultivation to living on per-
manent farms like Khmers. Some now even own motorbikes and brick houses, and they
no longer pray to the spirits when they get ill. New dams will bring electrification. New
roads will bring further improvements. “When we have good roads everything develops
faster,” Ham Phan told me, as his boss smiled down from a framed poster on the wall and
a dusty brass female
apsara
statue sat on a nearby shelf, frozen in mid-dance.
When asked about land disputes, Ham Phan blamed rights activists like Pen Bonnar for
inciting opinion against the authorities. “He always makes problems,” he said, unstacking
his phones and building them into a new pile. “So far no company has taken over any vil-
lagers' land. If that was really the case, I'd have to find a resolution, but it's not like that.
Ratanakkiri has changed from a cashew nut province into a rubber plantation province,
and it will provide jobs for villagers.”
