Sesan Dam Law Approved
Cambodia’s parliament on Friday approved a law providing financial guarantees for the developers of a planned hydropower dam on a Mekong River tributary, despite opposition from civil society groups seeking to delay the project. Villagers campaigning against the Lower Sesan 2 dam in northeastern Cambodia’s Stung Treng province have expressed concern about compensation for villagers displaced by the project, which they say would destroy protected forest areas, kill rare fish, and negatively impact local ethnic minority culture. But Friday’s vote in the National Assembly, after five hours of tough debate, cleared the way for the dam’s Chinese- and Vietnamese-backed developers to move ahead with plans to begin constructing the project next year. … Environmental group International Rivers said the law helps put into effect an implementation agreement that significantly reduced the project’s compensation and environment costs, effectively releasing the developers from responsibility for many of the dam’s ecological and social impacts. The text of the bill includes plans to provide compensation for less than 800 villagers displaced by the project, but green groups have said tens of thousands others living upstream and downstream from the project will also be affected. …
