...and damned if you don't, it would seem for 95,000 Vietnamese who must leave their lands and abandon their livelihoods to make way for the huge Son La Dam.
Straits Times 24 May 08;
Photojournalist Ashleigh Sim captures their sentiments
THE home of Cam Thi Sen, an ethnic Thai farmer, looks out over the lush valleys of north-western Vietnam. Her home is little more than a thatched straw roof on planks but generations of her ancestors have tilled this land.
This year, though, she will harvest her rice for the last time. The entire population of her village, Da Muong, is being moved 120km away to the town of Moc Chau.
Like tens of thousands of others, they are being forced to make way for Vietnam's biggest-ever hydroelectric power project, the controversial Son La Dam.
'When we move to the new location, we will not be able to grow rice any more,' said Madam Cam, 52. 'So we'll grow some other kinds of fruits and vegetables such as tea, corn, and cassava.'
Some 24,000ha - including 8,000ha of agricultural land and 3,000ha of rich forest - will be submerged to build it.
After 40 years of studies by the Vietnamese government, the project has finally taken off.
In 2005, the World Bank provided funding for the research, but decided not to lend its funds for the actual construction. It is now being funded by the local government.
By the time the project is completed in 2012, 100,000 people from twelve different ethnic minorities who thrive on subsistence farming along the fertile banks of the Black River will have been displaced.
Among the concerns about the project is the fact that the US$3.5billion (S$4.7billion) dam will be built in an earthquake-prone area.
If the walls of the dam crumbled, a massive wave would bulldoze its way down the Black River to Hoa Binh dam, near Hanoi, some 300km away.
That does not worry Madam Cam whose new home will be out of harm's way, but she has other concerns.
She will receive 12 million dong (S$1,000) in compensation for the move.
While that is a fair sum for her hut and small plot of land, she is afraid it will not be enough to support her in her new life.
Another worrying consequence of the dam project is the break-up of extended family groups which have traditionally lived in close-knit communities.
Madam Cam, for one, will miss one of her four children. A daughter married into a nearby village, which is in a different relocation plan: her new home is more than 100km away from her mother's.
Meanwhile, on a mountain ledge 15km away, construction of Ta Sai village is still ongoing after it was relocated three months ago.
With fences yet to be built, villagers' livestock wander freely and gather under stilt houses.
Nineteen-year-old Cam Thi Thuong - no relation to Madam Cam - has just returned from feeding the family's cows. They are still kept in her old village 3km downhill because there was not enough land to hold the animals until more land is cleared.
Her family can no longer grow rice and will now have to learn to grow hardier plants and trees as their food source.
Mr Pham Van Vien, head of the immigration displacement section of Muong La District, said in February: 'We have calculated very carefully how much land each family need to grow their food trees and we will support them to grow their trees.'
Indeed, an access road has yet to be constructed and electricity and running water have still not arrived. Yet Madam Cam's father-in-law, Mr Luong Van Dieu, one of the village headmen, still thinks his village was lucky.
'We only had to move a short distance, so we are still on our ancestral lands,' he said. 'Others have had to move far away. That is sad.'
