Rivers and lakes

About 50 villagers in Kandal province protested yesterday in an attempt to halt the activities of a Vietnamese sand-dredging company, which they said has caused a huge swath of their land to slide into the Mekong River. Residents of Kien Svay district’s Koh Prak village said ...

A district governor and two fisheries officials are among 10 people who will be questioned at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court next week over the destruction of flooded forest to make way for dry-season rice fields in Kampong Thom province, an official said yesterday. On July 27, ...

The Sahrika reports that around 50 villagers in Kandal province protested yesterday in an attempt to stop the sand dredging operation on the Mekong River. “The activity of sand dredging has severely affected our villagers’ lands and houses”, said village representative Tuy Phy. Kandal province residents believe ...

The Council of Ministers on Friday approved a draft report on political rights in Cambodia, which made outline efforts being made by the government to reduce poverty and secure land titles for millions across the country, a measure that Cambodia must complete as a signatory ...

The Cambodian government on Friday said it will limit fishing in a zone in the Mekong River to protect critically endangered freshwater dolphins The Irrawaddy dolphin conservation area will cover a 180-kilometre-long (110 miles) stretch of river from eastern Kratie province to the border with Laos, ...

Thirteen percent of more than 2,500 freshwater species of fish, crabs and plants profiled across the region are under threat of extinction, a report released on Wednesday says. According to an International Union for Conservation of Nature study of freshwater biodiversity in the “Indo-Burma” region, which includes Cambodia, ...

The Cambodian government has committed to the construction of five dams along the Mekong River in order to meet a huge demand for electricity, but environmental groups warn that severe repercussions loom for this strategy. “While each project proposed in Cambodia comes with a different set ...

More than 100 Cham families living in boats on the banks of Phnom Penh’s Chroy Chongva peninsula have agreed to relocate upriver after they celebrate the end of the holy month of Ramadan over the weekend, a community representative said on Friday. Matt Kriya, a representative ...

Thai construction company Ch Karnchang has continued work on the controversial Xayaburi dam in Laos, even as the Lao government has assured other Mekong River nations that the project is postponed pending further environmental studies, the company’s CEO said yesterday. Ch Karnchang’s CEO Plew Trivisvavet told ...

Construction of the main structure of the supposedly on-hold Xayaburi dam could begin by the end of this year, the Thai company contracted to build it said yesterday. Ch Karnchang chief executive Plew Trivisvavet said preparatory work at the site of the proposed US$3.8 billion, 1,285-megawatt ...

Work has resumed on a controversial $3.5 billion dam across the Mekong River in Laos, its Thai developer said on Thursday, contradicting Laotian assurances it had been suspended following protests over its environmental impact. Laos agreed in December to suspend the Xayaburi dam project and said ...

Children played along the banks of Phnom Penh’s Chroy Changva peninsula yesterday, while their parents napped under the shade of their bright yellow and blue boat homes. But members of this Cham fishing community overlooking Phnom Penh’s city space said it was a very different scene on ...

Fishermen bring their boats to shore, pack away their traps and hand over the day’s catch to their awaiting families on the banks of the Mekong River in Kratie province’s Chitra Borei district. “When my husband arrives home each day, we eat some of what he ...

Villagers belonging to a Thai activist group filed a complaint to Thailand’s Administrative Court yesterday for the cancellation of an agreement form the country’s Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand to buy power from a controversial mainstream Mekong dam in Laos, an NGO representative said yesterday. “According ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Thursday charged six people, including a provincial director of water resources and a commune chief, for their involvement in creating illegal fishing reservoirs in Kompong Thom province. “They were charged with clearing a flooded forest for encroachment and illegally constructing ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Wednesday questioned six people, including a provincial director of water resources and a commune chief, over allegations that they cleared part of a flooded forest in Kompong Thom to illegally construct reservoirs on the Tonle Sap. Earlier this month, military ...

The Lao government’s refusal to halt the construction of a controversial mainstream Mekong dam is “making a mockery” of an agreement between the four Mekong countries, international conservation group World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said yesterday. Though Laos had agreed in December to suspend construction of the ...

A decision on whether to build the Xayaburi dam on the Mekong River in northern Laos is a life and death one that will affect Cambodians downstream, according to Foreign Minister Hor Namhong. Speaking to reporters on Friday, Namhong said the controversial 1,260-megawatt hydropower dam has ...

The Laos government will continue to allow what it has dubbed “preparatory work” on the controversial Xayaburi dam, including the resettlement of villagers, despite promising to suspend the project at last week’s ASEAN Regional Forum, according to a media report in Laos. ...

The Thai company set to build Laos’s Xayaburi hydropower dam will not begin construction until a study determines the dam’s environmental effects on the Mekong River, Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said on Friday. Yingluck reaffirmed her commitment to the study, which Mekong River Commission countries ...

In February, Son Chhay wrote to the premier urging him to investigate illegal logging outside the legal clearing area slated for the Stung Tatai dam reservoir in Koh Kong province and the environmental destruction that would be wrought by the Stung Cheay Areng dam.  In a ...

Laos has denied it is pushing forward with the controversial Xayaburi hydropower dam in violation of international legal obligations, the country’s state media reported on Friday. Under a 1995 agreement with Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand, Laos was obligated to not begin construction without a prior ...

A further nine excavators used in the creation of illegal reservoirs have been seized by military police in Kompong Thom province’s Stong district, bringing the total number of machines confiscated this week to 38, police said Thursday. Twenty-nine excavators were seized during raids around the Tonle ...

Cambodia and Vietnam will write a joint letter to the Lao and Thai governments urging that construction of the Xayaburi dam, in northern Laos, be halted, a spokesman for the government’s Mekong committee said yesterday. Minister of Water Resources Lim Kean Hor met with Vietnam’s Minister ...