What is the Dam Worth? How Cambodia came to Build an Internationally Unpopular Dam

Abstract

Cambodia’s Lower Sesan II Dam has a rocky history. The ADB deemed it “undesirable” in 1999. Vietnam dropped out in 2007. It was disparaged as an environmental disaster and an abuse of human rights internationally. And yet the dam was officially completed in 2018 to much fanfare with help from China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This case study asks: what factors made Cambodia decide to build this dam, despite global experts advising otherwise? Who was this dam built for, and what trade-offs were Cambodian policy makers willing to make for them? What are Cambodia's plans for mitigating the societal and environmental impact of the dam? Why was China willing to join in when no one else would? These questions are important for extrapolating this dam to the likely construction of future large infrastructure projects in the context of development in the Mekong Region and increasing scale of the BRI.