Cambodia: peaceful direct action has saved one of our most beautiful forests

An environmental activist explains how a grassroots campaign has stalled the building of a dam in Cambodia

It was 2013 and I was swimming down a peaceful river in the Areng Valley in Cambodia, where many siamese crocodiles live. Further down the river young activists, who had earlier that year been shot at by the police during political protests, filmed me as I talked in Khmer about the natural beauty of the area - and all that stood to be lost by building a hydropower dam there.

Days later this video went viral in the country and kickstarted our campaign to save the Areng Valley from destruction. At this point there was little environmental activism in Cambodia. Prominent anti-logging activist Chut Wutty had been murdered one year earlier and the big international environmental NGOs were really inactive. Brave, effective civil society in Cambodia was either dead, in jail or didn't dare move.