The ADB was expected to approve financing this year for the proposed 260-megawatt dam on the Se San River – a powerful Mekong tributary flowing from Vietnam’s central highlands through lowland Cambodia, and one that dam builders, including Canadian utility, Hydro-Québec, have long coveted.

But in June, the ADB deferred its decision following news reports that the Yali dam, located 20 kilometres upstream of the Se San site, had caused devastating flash floods in downstream Cambodia’s Ratanakiri province, drowning five villagers, destroying livestock, crops and fishing equipment, and threatening the lives of 20,000 people living along the Cambodian stretch of the river.

“We used to make our livelihood from fishing,” said one Ratanakiri resident. “Now our fishing gear has all been lost . . . All our [rice] paddy has been flooded . . . we are all starving.”

No longer able to drink river water or grow rice, locals fear that flash floods will take more lives, according to a recent survey of 59 villages downstream of the Yali dam.

The survey conducted by Ratanakiri officials estimates that 1,800 downstream families have lost crops this year due to the river’s erratic flows. Hundreds of people have reported stomach ailments as well as skin and eye infections after drinking or bathing in the foul-smelling water released from Yali. The dam has also obstructed fish migrations from the Mekong to Se San, causing the death of the river’s fishery – a main source of food and income.

The Vietnamese government has publicly apologized for the drownings caused by Yali but Cambodian villagers are appealing for compensation and for the Se San’s natural flow to be restored so they can resume rice farming.

The ADB has offered to pay for further investigation of impacts on both sides of the border in order to come up with “appropriate environmental and social mitigation programs.” But critics in Cambodia and internationally are skeptical about the ADB’s response, saying that more studies by dam proponents won’t help Yali’s victims or protect communities from additional hazards posed by the Se San dam.

“The ADB’s bad record speaks volumes,” says Gráinne Ryder of the Toronto-based citizens’ group Probe International. “An evaluation of bank practice last year found that ADB-backed hydro developers routinely dismiss or underestimate downstream impacts, they sometimes pay for environmental mitigation programs that don’t work, and they never properly compensate people who have lost their fishing and farming livelihoods.” Before the Yali tragedy, the ADB had planned to provide a US$80-million start-up loan for the Se San dam this year, in the hopes of attracting the remaining US$240-million from international investors, such as Hydro-Québec, seeking dam-building contracts in the region.

Under the ADB’s model of hydro development, no community is safe, according to Ryder. “Dam builders expect to get water rights and hydro revenue without any binding responsibility or accountability to the people who depend upon the river.”

Probe International, together with other citizens’ groups in ADB-donor countries, is urging the bank to withdraw from the Se San project, which is uncompetitive with other power sources, and remove itself from the dam-building business altogether.

Canada is a major shareholder in the Manila-based Asian Development Bank.