The Sesan, Srepok and Sekong Rivers:

The Sesan, Srepok and Sekong rivers are important transboundary tributaries of the Mekong River, accounting for 19 percent of the flow of the Mekong River’s total annual discharge. The Sesan and Srepok flow from the central highlands of Vietnam through Cambodia’s Ratanakiri, Mondulkiri, and Stung Treng provinces before converging into Sekong River. The Sekong River on the other hand begins in Vietnam, then flows through southern Laos into Cambodia and before reaching Cambodia’s Stung Treng province where it merges with the Sesan and Srepok rivers, and then finally the Mekong River.

Together these three rivers sustain the livelihoods of more than a hundred communities in northeastern Cambodia who rely on them for fishing, farming and maintaining their cultural traditions. These ethnic communities represent more than twelve different minority groups, including the Lao, Jarai, Kachok, Tampuan, Brao, Krueng, Kavet, La Deum, Khmer Kho, Khmer Padeum, Pnong and Chinese. Each of these groups have distinct livelihoods, cultures and languages, and many of these communities are economically poor and lack access to basic social services, such as schools and health centers.

Besides being a source of food security, water supply, and cultural richness for people living along these rivers, the 3S rivers are a source of immense biodiversity, rich in fisheries, and are critical for the migration of fish species traveling to and from Central Cambodia’s Tonle Sap Lake and from upstream areas of the Mekong basin in Laos PDR and Thailand.