Non-government Organizations, Villagers, Political Culture and the Lower Sesan 2 Dam in Northeastern Cambodia

ABSTRACT

The Lower Sesan 2 (LS2) Hydropower Project in northeastern Cambodia is presently under construction. As the largest dam to ever be built in Cambodia, it is expected to cause serious and widespread environmental and social impacts. This article analyzes, on the one hand, the relationships between Cambodian non-government organizations (NGOs) and villagers who will be negatively impacted by LS2, and on the other, NGO relations with the Cambodian state. While development actors frequently attempt to construct particular narratives in order to control development trajectories, this research demonstrates that such attempts can meet with serious resistance from local people, even when facing powerful opponents, including in this case NGOs that prefer to advocate for better resettlement and compensation conditions rather than for the cancellation of projects. Focusing on interactions, positioning, local agency, and the particular political culture of Cambodia, this article highlights the importance of particular types of patronage relations in Cambodia between NGOs and villagers, NGOs and the state, and associated territorialization.

Keywords:

• hydropower
• dam
• non-government organization
• northeastern Cambodia
• representation

Acknowledgments

Thanks to the local people who have assisted me over the years in understanding the circumstances of the Sesan and Srepok River Basins. I also thank W. Nathan Green for comments on an earlier version of this article and Noah Theriault, who introduced me to some useful literature. Two anonymous reviewers and Robert Shepherd from Critical Asian Studies also provided valuable comments. Katie Hardwick from the Cartography Lab of the Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin–Madison prepared the map, and 3SPN provided the photo designated as Figure 3.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Ian G. Baird is an assistant professor of Geography at University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has conducted research in northeastern Cambodia since 1995. He organized the first community-based studies of the impacts of the Yali Falls dam in Vietnam on downstream areas in Cambodia in Ratanakari Province (2000) and Stung Treng Province (2001) and supported the establishment of the Sesan Protection Network (SPN), later renamed the Sesan, Srepok and Sekong (3S) Protection Network (3SPN). He has never, however, been officially involved with the governance of either SPN or 3SPN. He conducted his Master's and Ph.D. research in Ratanakiri Province between 2000 and 2008. In 2009, he was hired by the Rivers Coalition of Cambodia (RCC) to study the Lower Sesan 2 dam. He worked closely with 3SPN in Ratanakiri and CEPA in Stung Treng during this research.

Notes

¹Interview with village headman in community in Sesan District, Stung Treng Province, June 26, 2012.

²Baird, Shoemaker, and Manorom 2015; Guttal and Shoemaker 2004; WCD 2000; McCully 2001; Goldsmith and Hilyard 1984.

³Baird 2010.

⁴Interview with Commune Chief in Sesan District, Stung Treng Province, May 2012.

⁵Burawoy 1998.

⁶Guha 1989.

⁷Cronon 1996.

⁸See, for example, Brockington, Duffy, and Igoe 2008; Neumann 1998; Sundberg 1998.

⁹Robertson 2004; Brockington et al. 2008; Brockington and Duffy 2010; Lohmann 2011.

¹⁰Bakker 2005, 2009; Heynen and Robbins 2005; Castree 2008a, 2008b.

¹¹Fairhead, Leach, and Scoones 2012, 2013; Benjaminsen and Bryceson 2012.

¹²Brosius 1997.

¹³Brosius, Tsing, and Zerner 1998, 2005.

¹⁴Brosius 1999; Ferguson 1994.

¹⁵Timmer 2010.

¹⁶Bryant and Goodman 2004.

¹⁷Goldman 2005.

¹⁸See Goldsmith and Hilyard 1984; McCully 2001; Baird, Shoemaker, and Manorom 2015.

¹⁹Schuller 2009, 85.

²⁰Tsing 1999; Chernela 2005; Medina 2010.

²¹See Muehlmann 2009; Richard 2009; Novellino and Dressler 2010.

²²See, however, Li 2007; Singh 2009.

²³Welker 2012.

²⁴Vandergeest and Peluso 1995; 388.

²⁵Peluso 2005.

²⁶Brosius and Russell 2003.

²⁷Baird 2010.

²⁸Bourdier 2006.

²⁹Baird 2009.

³⁰Not 75 meters as erroneously reported by some, including Baird 2009.

³¹Thin 2013; However, LS2 is not the first dam to face resistance by people in Cambodia. In the Areng Valley in Koh Kong Province, southwestern Cambodia, there has been considerable high-profile resistance by locals and a supporting Cambodian NGO to plans to build the Stung Cheay Areng dam by the well-known Chinese company Sinohydro (Phak and Pye 2014), with different NGOs supporting different approaches. There has also been considerable resistance, including protests and petitions, to plans to build large dams on the mainstream Mekong River in Laos (Phak 2015).

³²Halcrow and Partners 1999.

³³Halcrow and Partners 1999.

³⁴Meach 2008.

³⁵Fisheries Office and NTFP 2000; Baird et al. 2002; Hirsch and Wyatt 2004; NGO Forum on Cambodia 2005; Baird and Meach 2005; SWECO Grøner 2006; Wyatt and Baird 2007; 3SPN 2007.

³⁶PECCI 2008a.

³⁷PECCI 2008b; KCC 2008, 2009.

³⁸Baird 2009.

³⁹Baird 2009; Previous research has indicated that up to 85 percent of all the fish caught in these communities seasonally migrate from below where the LS2 is expected to be built (Baird and Meach 2005; KCC 2009).

⁴⁰Baird 2009.

⁴¹Baird 2009.

⁴²Ziv et al. 2012.

⁴³Phorn 2010.

⁴⁴Business Monitor Online 2011. It is notable that Hun Sen, a founding member of the CPP, has been Prime Minister for over 30 years, since 1985, making him one of the longest standing national political leaders in Asia.

⁴⁵VietNamNet Bridge 2011.

⁴⁶The Royal Group has a separate partnership in Cambodia with ANZ Bank.

⁴⁷Soeun 2011.

⁴⁸Notes of meeting with Stephen Higgins, ANZ Bank, Phnom Penh, August 22, 2011.

⁴⁹Tep Bunnarith, CEPA, pers. comm., July 2012.

⁵⁰Although since it was not able to sell its shares, the company had initially received a 10 percent share in the project instead (Chen and Naren 2012).

⁵¹Hul 2014.

⁵²Naren and Chen 2013.

⁵³Naren 2013b.

⁵⁴Naren 2013b.

⁵⁵Naren and Chen 2013.

⁵⁶Naren 2013a.

⁵⁷RCC 2009, 2013b.

⁵⁸ http://www.savethemekong.org/link.php?langss=en, accessed June 14, 2014.

⁵⁹Interview with Ame Trandem, formerly of NGO Forum of Cambodia, Phnom Penh, 2010. This was confirmed when I interviewed Im Phallay, a senior NGO Forum staff, in Phnom Penh at the NGO Forum office on June 21, 2012.

⁶⁰Participants of ASEAN People's Forum, 2012.

⁶¹Interview with Tep Bunnarith, CEPA, Phnom Penh, July 2012.

⁶²Interview with employee of 3SPN, Ban Lung, June 27, 2012.

⁶³NGO Forum on Cambodia 2012.

⁶⁴Interview with Tep Bunnarith, CEPA, Phnom Penh, July 2012.

⁶⁵Interview with Mea Vann Navy, EWMI, Phnom Penh, June 20, 2012.

⁶⁶Interview with Villager 1 from Sesan District village, June 21, 2013.

⁶⁷The villager could not remember the name of the video, but I later learned that it was titled “Helping the People of Stung Treng Imagine Hydropower Relocation,” a title that in itself speaks to the inevitability of the project proceeding, even though it had not yet been fully approved at the time.

⁶⁸It should be noted that the acronym for CGIAR has become the name of the consortium, with the originally no longer being mentioned anywhere on their website. The website claims, however, that “CGIAR is the only worldwide partnership addressing agricultural research for development, whose work contributes to the global effort to tackle poverty, hunger and major nutrition imbalances, and environmental degradation” (www.cgiar.org).

⁶⁹See https://waterandfood.org/river-basins/mekong/, accessed June 14, 2014.

⁷⁰William Nathan Green, pers. comm., June 18, 2014.

⁷¹Villagers from Stung Treng, Ban Lung, pers. comm., June 25, 2013.

⁷²Radio Free Asia 2012.

⁷³Interview with senior staff, 3SPN, Ban Lung, June 27, 2012.

⁷⁴Meach Mean, 3SPN, Ban Lung, pers. comm., June 27, 2012.

⁷⁵Paul Humphrey, 3SPN advisor, Ban Lung, pers. comm., June 27, 2012.

⁷⁶A villager in Stung Treng, pers. comm., June 15, 2012.

⁷⁷See, for example, Lamb 2014.

⁷⁸See, for example, Baird 2010.

⁷⁹Senior staff, 3SPN, Ban Lung, pers. comm., June 26, 2012.

⁸⁰Interview with Mea Vann Navy, EWMI, Phnom Penh, June 20, 2012.

⁸¹Liu 2014.

⁸²Hun 2011, 5.

⁸³Thin 2013.

⁸⁴Phorn and Crothers 2014.

⁸⁵Vandergeest and Peluso 1995.

⁸⁶Interview with Witoon Permpongsacharoen, MEE Net, Bangkok, May 23, 2014; Interview with Premrudee Daoroung, TERRA, Bangkok, May 26, 2014.

⁸⁷https://waterandfood.org/river-basins/mekong/, accessed June 14, 2014.

⁸⁸Killeen 2012.

⁸⁹Forsyth and Walker 2008.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a grant from the Graduate School of the University of Wisconsin, Madison.