News

Environmental experts concern of a drop in the number of rare species of fish in the river in the northeastern province including of the Upper Mekong Basin, Srepok River and Se San river. The worry after a number of exotic fish caught in the area’s ...

The fate of 70 million people rests on what happens to the Mekong river. With world leaders meeting in Paris next week for crucial UN climate talks, John Vidal journeys down south-east Asia’s vast waterway – a place that encapsulates some of the dilemmas they ...

Forestry officials and police on Monday arrested seven men for logging illegally in Stung Treng province’s Sesan district, officials said Tuesday. ...

Special Rapporteur Surya Subedi has been called on to investigate and seek justice for human rights violations caused by the development of two large-scale hydropower dams in Cambodia. ...

Villagers whose homes will be destroyed if the controversial Lower Sesan 2 Dam is built are to deliver today a letter to provincial authorities announcing that they refuse to be resettled. Meach Mean, coordinator of the 3S Rivers Protection Network, said the villagers, who hail from ...

A large-scale hydropower dam in China began releasing a deluge of water from its overfilling reservoir on Friday, leaving downstream neighbours to fear imminent inundation. ...

On the Sesan and Srepok rivers in the northeast, boats of all shapes and sizes lug timber back and forth between the banks. Men wait on craggy land alongside the water with jerry-rigged winches and homemade vehicles to drag precious cargo up steep inclines. Fallen ...

More than 200 residents from seven villages in Ratanakkiri province’s Taveng district have filed a complaint to the local Administrative Fisheries Department and two right groups over claims that rival anglers in the area are collecting fish in their protected lot by poisoning the catch. ...

Officials involved in negotiating compensation offers between the developers of the Lower Sesan II dam and affected villagers have kept a portion of the money paid out to 12 families for themselves, according to an official. Duong Pov, Stung Treng provincial administration director, claimed that a ...

Filthy trucks loaded with luxury timber rule the red-earth roads in this heavily deforested district. Each day, dozens of 10-wheelers bounce along the pot-holed roads, carting logs of the much-sought Thnong timber. And while some of the cargo is legal, much of it is not. ...

A group of 15 local and international rights groups Tuesday sent a slew of letters to the Chinese government and companies involved in the Lower Sesan II hydropower dam in Stung Treng province seeking a halt to dam construction due to serious environmental and social ...

Already under attack by overfishing, pollution and deforestation, Tonle Sap Lake fisheries face an even bigger threat in the form of hydropower dams, according to experts. Laos’ planned Don Sahong Hydropower Project in particular has environmentalists fearing an emptier, less bio-diverse lake, and a nation pitched ...

“From my view, I don’t want to have it, but it is development, we can’t stop them,” says Srekor’s village chief, Leang Saroeurn. Cambodia’s impressive yearly GDP growth rates of 7 percent for the last decade have come, in part, through a ravenous consumption of the countries ...

A coalition of NGOs yesterday implored Prime Minister Hun Sen to shelve the government’s plans for the Stung Cheay Areng hydropower dam in Koh Kong province and instead turn the wilderness area in question into an eco-tourism site. ...

Communities threatened by the planned construction of three hydropower dams in Stung Treng and Ratanakkiri provinces will today submit to the Chinese Embassy a petition demanding that the embassy intervene against Chinese companies investing in the dams. The petition, to be presented in Chinese, Khmer and ...

As Laos pushes toward its goal of becoming the “battery of Asia” through hydropower, its newfound claim that the location for the proposed Don Sahong dam is not on the Mekong River’s main stream is provoking incredulity from some observers. Less than two kilometres north of ...

Environmentalists and NGOs are threatening to sue developers of a controversial hydropower dam, claiming the project would cause irreversible damage to the Mekong River. The Don Sahong dam, a 260-megawatt project proposed on a site less than two kilometres north of the Cambodian-Lao border, is expected ...

Environmental groups and a local community leader in Stung Treng province have called for a nationwide boycott of the popular Angkor Beer brand to protest the beverage company’s links to a controversial hydro­power dam to be built in Laos. Laos announced earlier this month that it ...

Logging has officially begun in Stung Treng province in preparation for the construction of a massive hydropower dam, but local authorities and villagers said Wednesday that the clearing of forest is going unchecked outside the official dam concession area. The Lower Sesan 2 dam was approved ...

Dam-building and gold mining in southern Laos are ruining water quality downstream on the Sekong River in Cambodia, where villagers are no longer able to drink or use the water, according to an environmental group. The activities undertaken by Lao and Vietnamese companies on the Sekong’s ...

For Meach Mean, a veteran campaigner against hydropower dams in Cambodia’s northeast, this year has brought a double dose of bad news. First, he says, two Chinese hydropower companies have begun feasibility studies into a pair of dams planned for tributaries of the Mekong River ...

The National Assembly has announced that it will discuss a draft law on the financing of a controversial dam project in Stung Treng province on February 15, a move environmental groups called premature. Meach Mean, coordinator for 3S Rivers Protection Network – which has been ...

Representatives of a massive hydropower dam project in Stung Treng province’s Sesan district approached local authorities late last month informing them that the government had granted the company permission to clear 36,000 hec­tares of land for a reservoir, officials said on Sunday. The 400-megawatt Lower Se­san ...

Experts are recommending that a proposed dam on the Sesan River in northeast Cambodia be equipped with earthquake protection measures, after discovering a quake occurred in the area some 30 years ago. The proposed Lower Sesan II dam would be situated on a site in Stung ...