Abstract
Hydro-power projects on the Mekong River may cause great impacts on sustainability of the river. This paper investigates the role of Cambodia’s environmental impact assessment (EIA) in governing hydro-power projects and examines whether the current EIA legal regime is capable to address the challenges raised by hydro-power projects. The author finds that Cambodia has established high standards in EIA legal framework. Some proposed requirements, such as the consideration of the impacts of climate change and trans-boundary impacts, may constitute great challenge for future enforcement. Case study in hydro-power projects suggests that the implementation of EIA is far from fulfilling the purposes promised by the black letters in the law. Currently, the main difficulties in implementation are lack of capacity building and public participation. The imperfection of land law as an external element is another obstacle to the effectiveness of EIA law. As a mid-stream riparian state of the Mekong River, on one hand Cambodia is facing potential negative impacts of hydro-power projects in Lao PDR and China, on the other hand, its hydro-power projects may add more threats to the sustainability of Mekong River. This paper argues that for the sustainability of the Mekong water system, Cambodia should implement its EIA law seriously and speed the work of land titles.
Highlights
This paper investigates the role of Cambodia’s environmental impact assessment (EIA) in governing hydro-power projects and examines whether the current EIA legal regime is capable to address the challenges raised by hydro-power projects
Article 18 of the 1999 EIA Sub-decree has raised eye-brows since the sub-decree was passed and entered into force. It provides that if the Ministry of Environment (MoE) fails to respond its finding and recommendations back to project owner and to project approval ministry or institution within 30 working days, the approval ministry or institution will assume that the revised Initial Environmental Impact Assessment (IEIA) report has complied with the criteria of the sub-decree (Article 18 of Sub-decree on Environmental Impact Assessment, 1999)
It is extremely difficult for Cambodia to accomplish the designed objectives of EIA as it is confronted with the difficulties in human resources, law implementation and public participation in EIA practices
Summary
The economic growth has substantial impact on its environment, and in recent years Cambodia is making stride to improve its environmental legal structure, in which the environmental code is the most prominent step. Focusing on EIA-related issues in Cambodia, this paper consists of four sections with a few suggestions in the conclusion It starts with the methodology and the factual background in the first section; the second section introduces the basic legal structure of EIA practice in Cambodia; the third section discusses the implementation of EIA in Cambodia’s hydro-power sector and possible causes in practice for the troubles as having been criticized in some existed projects; and the last section focuses on loopholes in laws which should be tackled with urgently for the sake of future improvement of hydro-power governance in the country
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