The prime minister of Cambodia confirmed the ban on major dam projects that was declared in 2020, saying that the nation will not build any hydropower dams on the Mekong River.

At the groundbreaking ceremony for a 150-megawatt hydroelectric dam in Koh Kong, southern province, Prime Minister Hun Manet stated that building dams on the Mekong’s main stream would have “a huge impact” on the ecology of the river.

After canceling a $1.5 billion coal project in a protected reserve, the nation has decided not to construct dams on the Mekong River.

Cambodian PM’s Decision for Ecology?

Irrespective of the advantages, “the 7th-mandate Royal Government will not build dams on the Mekong River,” Prime Minister Hun Manet declared, according to a report on the Cambodian People’s Party website.

The largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia and a vital source of protein for the people of Cambodia, Tonle Sap Lake, may also suffer from the growth of hydropower, he claimed.

Companies have been criticizing Cambodia for allowing them to chop down hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest, even in protected regions, for hydropower dams, rubber and sugar cane plantations, and other objectives.

Building dams on the Mekong’s main stream would, according to Prime Minister Hun Manet, have “a huge impact” on the ecosystem and environment of the river as well as the Tonle Sap Lake, which is the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia and a major fish supply for the people of Cambodia.

“The government will not build any dams along the Mekong River because it affects a lot,” he declared during a hydropower dam’s groundbreaking ceremony in the coastal province of Koh Kong.

Manet also announced the official cancelation of the 700 megawatt, $1.5 billion coal project that was scheduled to go online in 2025 in Koh Kong’s Botum Sakor National Park. Hun Manet said that Cambodia would not build any more coal-fired power plants as part of its “responsibility for the world’s shared environment and climate,” according to the news agency AFP.

In his speech, Hun Manet stated that sixty percent of the nation’s energy comes from renewable sources, primarily hydropower. He said that by the end of the decade, the government wanted to raise this to 70% “so that our country becomes the clean energy destination for tourism and investment.”

Officials are considering importing LNG (liquefied natural gas) in place of the project.

Cambodia’s Message to Other Countries

According to AFP, the leader of Cambodia stated that the action was a message to other nations participating in the COP28 climate negotiations in Dubai. In December 2021, Phnom Penh unveiled its Long-term Strategy for Carbon Neutrality, which outlines the city’s goal of having net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

In order to achieve this, investments in liquid natural gas—which will be utilized as “a transition fuel in the power sector”—will be made in addition to a decrease in the growth of renewable energy. Électricité du Cambodge estimates that in 2022, hydropower produced approximately 54% of Cambodia’s electricity, with coal accounting for 35.5% of the total.

The statement issued by Manet on the Mekong dams is hardly startling. Following multiple seasons of exceptionally severe droughts that caused water levels along Southeast Asia’s largest river to drop to record lows, the government of Cambodia declared in March 2020 a 10-year ban on Mekong dam developments. The Ministry of Environment later reaffirmed this commitment.

At the time, a government official stated that a Japanese consultant’s suggestion for Cambodia to invest in alternate energy sources led to the decision to put off the construction of the Mekong project.

The Sambor project, located in Kratie province to the south, and the Stung Treng dam, located in the northern province of the same name, had been the two massive hydropower projects that the government had planned for the great river’s mainstream at the time.

Environmental activists have sharply attacked both, arguing that mainstream hydropower dam construction, especially in China, have had a deleterious effect on the Mekong, which stretches 4,350 kilometers from the South China Sea to the snowy plateau of Tibet.