The women who won’t let go: Female-led resistance to development harms across Asia

BANGKOK — Now in her mid-70s, Sompong Viengchan has seen 16 prime ministers and 26 cabinets come and go during her fight against a dam upstream of her village. Governments change; her demand for justice remains. Since 1990, Sompong and her neighbors along the Mun and Mekong rivers have fought relentlessly to prove that the 136 MW multipurpose Pak Mun Dam, co-funded by the World Bank Group and built to deliver promised prosperity, instead took their livelihoods. At a people’s tribunal in Bangkok in October, aimed at highlighting the social and environmental impacts of IMF and World Bank-funded projects, Sompong told the story of the women-led Pak Mun Dam movement to 400 women land defenders from more than 30 nations. “Living in the village downstream with no agricultural land, we rely primarily on fishing,” Sompong said. “Blasting rock for dam construction wiped out local fish. We faced financial ruin — investments vanished and were replaced by debt; livelihoods became impossible to sustain. Families were forced to send their children to big cities to work, and when the area flooded, the entire community had to relocate.” In 2000, the World Commission on Dams, a body established by the World Bank and IUCN, determined the dam took houses and land, or both, from around 1,700 households and that fish catches in the reservoir and directly upstream declined by 60-80%. “Building a dam is the same as burying a person alive,” Sompong said. “It doesn’t kill you right away, but it ruins your…This article was originally published on

Mongabay