Stung Treng To Phnom Penh

Stung Treng, Cambodia sits at the confluence of the Sekong and the Mekong rivers. The Sekong river tributaries, the Sesan and Srepok, both have proposed and / or existing dams. The section of the Mekong just south of Stung Treng sits between Cambodia’s two proposed Mekong main stem dams.

 

The area is also home to several species of regionally at risk, threatened or endangered birds, turtles, and Irrawaddy river dolphins. Local people eat fish, on average, daily. This area will undergo huge transitions if all the dams are built. Food, water, location of villages, tourism – all will be impacted.

 

We spent five days on some uninhabited islands in this section of the Mekong with a bird research team. We spoke with the PhD student performing the research, her wildlife photographer, a local survivor of the Khmer Rouge era who tended the camp while the crew was out during the day, and his son who navigated and operated our boat. One of the staff we followed has several ‘first on the Mekong’ sightings of bird species.

 

Our Cambodian born translator had fled  from at the start of the Khmer Rouge era. His family lived in a refugee camp in Thailand for almost a decade. At 12 he moved to Chicago knowing no English and never having seen life outside the camp. After many harrowing experiences in the US that led to unsurprising complications with the law he was forcibly returned to Cambodia at the age of 30. He had never gained full US citizenship and had no recollection of ever having been in Cambodia.

 

There are many stories like his in Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. And many like those of our boatman who showed us bullet wounds from the brief Cambodian / Khmer Rouge war with Vietnam. Many people are very averse to conflict for a variety of good reasons. One man told us, “When I hear about war in other countries I feel sad because I know what it’s like.” Being restricted by those feelings based in the horrific past of the Khmer Rouge and Vietnam war era, and a relatively controlling government may leave people with few options.

 

In conversation people tend to be either indifferent to the coming changes due to what they say is a lack of information or vocally opposed. Older people sometimes seem more concerned about the river and fish than they do about electricity. One man shrugged and said he was happy with batteries.

 

A few we spoke with expressed a desire to be active in their opposition to large scale river development. There is not much space for that. The day we arrived to the Capitol, Phnom Penh, a labor rights protest was disbanded by authorities because it had political leanings.

 

We do know that Cambodians eat more fish than any other people in the world. This is true if you measure pounds per year, percentage of calories, or percentage of protein in the diet from fish. Seasonal flows from the Mekong back up into the Tonle Sap lake and out again provide much of that abundance. Those flows will likely be affected by main stream and tributary dams.

 

Phnom Penh is an active, developing city at the confluence of the Tonle Sap river and the Mekong. Numerous International NGO’s and businesses have offices there. We’ve been talking with some of them about options for the river and its people. Watch for details about these people and ecological systems on coming pages. And as always – tell us about your river.