The Cambodian government recently approved at least three new irrigation dam projects within protected forests of the Cardamom Mountains that overlap with two carbon credit projects, reports Mongabay’s Gerald Flynn.
Projects to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD+) aim to combat climate change and support local communities by generating carbon credits for protecting forests. Companies and institutions can buy those credits to offset their own emissions.
The recently approved Cambodian dams in Battambang, Koh Kong and Pursat provinces, and their supporting infrastructure, are expected to cause about 5,200 hectares (12,850 acres) of deforestation.
“It is true that the construction of these dams and roads will cause significant forest loss,” Suwanna Gauntlett, director of Wildlife Alliance, which co-manages the REDD+ projects, told Flynn.
Five hydropower dams already being constructed in the same Cardamom forests have damaged roughly 15,000 hectares (37,000 acres) of forest. Some of these dams have given cover to illegal logging operations within protected REDD+ forests, further expanding the risk posed by opening up old-growth rainforest for development.
Local Indigenous leaders told Flynn they’re concerned the dam projects will damage the forest that sustains them without adequately compensating local people.
“We receive no benefits at all from the new dams, we get zero benefits,” Rim Sao Si, an Indigenous leader and deputy chief of Chumnoab commune, told Flynn. “It’s like a war against the forest.”
In 2014, the Chorng ethnic group, of which Si is a member, successfully protested the construction of the Stung Cheay Areng Dam, a project that would have displaced 1,500 people and threatened wildlife, including the Siamese crocodile (Crocodylus siamensis) and Asian elephant (Elephas maximus).
The dam projects are also raising concerns about the Cambodian government’s commitment to REDD+.
Danny Cullenward, an economist and lawyer specializing in carbon markets, said government actions like approving dams in protected REDD+ projects undermine the success of such conservation projects. He said dam and timber investments are likely far more lucrative for the government than any compensation they might receive from REDD+ projects and the sale of carbon credits.
The conflicting land use priorities in Cambodia are illustrative of larger, systemic challenges for REDD+ projects. A 2024 paper in Nature Communications suggested that of the more than 2,000 REDD+ projects it studied, just 16% of the carbon credits issued actually resulted in emissions reductions.
Carbon offsetting projects are “ultimately a promise about what happens to the atmosphere, and when big political and economic forces are at work, the atmosphere gets the short end of the stick,” Cullenward said. “[I]f Cambodia decides hydropower is the way, the atmosphere loses. The notion that these programs are there to protect the atmosphere is a very weak point.”
This is summary of “New dams call into question Cambodia’s commitment to REDD+ projects” by Gerald Flynn.
Banner image: Middle Russei Chrum Dam being built on the edge of the Southern Cardamom REDD+ project. Image by Gerald Flynn/Mongabay.
