Se San Protection Network – Cambodia

September 1, 2003

A leading donor to Vietnam’s hydropower sector, the Swedish International Development
Agency, has no power to influence its client-government’s dam building practice, according to a senior aid official.

Press Backgrounder A leading donor to Vietnam’s hydropower sector, the Swedish International Development Agency, has no power to influence its client-government’s
dam building practice, according to a senior aid official. Rolf Carlman, Sida’s Assistant Director General and Head of Infrastructure and Economic Cooperation, said all the aid agency can do is “maintain a dialogue on issues of concerns.” Responding to an appeal for help from Cambodian victims of Vietnam’s Yali Falls dam, Carlman writes that Sida
recognizes “the population downstream has been seriously affected by operation of the [Yali] plant” but “it is neither in our power nor does it befit our role as a donor to ‘ensure’ that a country with which we cooperate undertakes one action or another.” Since the state-owned Electricity of Vietnam Corporation (EVN) built the 720-megawatt dam on
the Se San River – a large Mekong tributary shared by Vietnam and Cambodia – an estimated 50,000 Cambodians have lost fishing and farming income due to the river’s hazardous fluctuations. Riverside communities and Cambodian NGOs are asking all aid agencies bankrolling EVN, particularly Sida, to share responsibility for the utility’s damaging operations and insist upon fair treatment for those harmed. Meanwhile,
Sida is paying for Vietnam’s national hydropower plan, a multi-billion dollar blueprint for more hydro dams on Se San, without consulting downstream Cambodians. Carlman says it is up to Vietnam and Cambodia, and the Mekong River Commission, to resolve “cross-border issues [along] the Se San River.” Cambodian groups find Sida’s response
unacceptable yet unsurprising given the vested interest of Nordic dam building companies in Vietnam. According to Ea Sophy, environment coordinator for the Phnom Penh-based NGO Forum on Cambodia, “Sida should be more proactive in protecting the interests of the poor. As a longtime EVN donor it should insist upon fair treatment for those harmed by the utility’s dams, in accordance with the highest Nordic standards.”