Cambodia: Stop the flooding of the Cardamom Forest!

 
This is what’s at stake: rainforest as far as the eye can see (Photo: Luke Duggleby)

China Guodian Corporation, a state-owned power company, plans to build a hydroelectric dam on the Areng’s upper reaches in Cambodia.

The Cheăy Areng dam would spell catastrophe for the rainforest dwellers by inundating their habitat. Just a few hundred of the highly-endangered Siamese crocodiles remain worldwide – and most of them live in the Areng Valley. The indigenous peoples would lose their homes and have to be relocated.

From an economic point of view, the project makes little sense, as its costs would exceed its benefits for the country:

• 20,000 hectares of rainforest are to be flooded; half of them in the Central Cardamoms Protected Forest.
• The lost habitat is one of the most important biologically diverse areas in Cambodia, with more than 277 animal species recorded in the valley, of which 31 are globally threatened. Among these are the Asian elephant, the clouded leopard, the Siamese crocodile, the dragon fish and the white-winged duck.
• Development of the densely wooded river valley would pave the way for illegal logging and poaching.
• Nearly 1,000 indigenous Khmer Daeum people face forced relocation from their ancestral homelands that they have sustainably managed to date.

Other energy companies have studied the project but turned it down – in addition to the environmental damage, the costs for the dam would be very high in view of the plant’s low capacity. Its projected output of only 108 MW would not meet Cambodia’s rising energy needs.

China Guodian Corporation, however, now wants to sign an agreement on the construction and operation of the dam with the Cambodian government.

Original text here