Mekong River Commission

Environment Programme

The Mekong River Commission Environment Programme works to support cooperation among the Member State governments and boost their capacity to secure a balance between economic development and ecological protection in the Mekong River Basin. The aim is to ensure a healthy environment that can support the area’s rich diversity of natural resources while allowing people’s livelihoods and productivity to flourish.

While directly assisting the Member States with their efforts to fulfil the articles of the 1995 Agreement, as they relate to protection of the environment and maintaining the ecological balance of the basin, the Environment Programme also supplies essential data and tools for environmental planning and management to the other MRC programmes. This is conducted through expertise at the Secretariat and at field stations around the basin, where staff assess and monitor water quality and ecosystem health. The programme also improves environmental policy and management through partnerships with various environmental agencies, thereby supporting the BDP process.

There are five technical components within the Environment Programme:

• Environmental Monitoring and Assessment;
• Environment Decision Support;
• People and Aquatic Ecosystems;
• Environmental Knowledge;
• Environmental Flows Management.

Various milestones were achieved during 2007, including the introduction of two new parameters in the water quality monitoring network. This advance is part of the drive to build capacity in all the assigned national laboratories, to assist them with adopting and integrating international quality analysis and control systems. A water quality assessment report on the Mekong River over the past 20 years was also completed.

The programme’s ecosystem health monitoring activity completed its first four-year monitoring cycle, plus a draft report on the basin’s aquatic ecological condition. The Mekong basin report card for aquatic ecological health will be published in 2008 after final agreement is received from all Member States. A new and exciting initiative on climate change and adaptation for the LMB will be launched early in 2008 with support from AusAID and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. This crosscutting activity will involve all other MRC programmes.

Following a recommendation from the Joint Committee, the programme has started identification of environmental critical areas, on which it can focus future work to develop tools and skills (largely composed of awareness raising) for prevention and mediation of disputes and differences. It also began capacity building to support the implementation of Goal 2 of the Strategic Plan 2006-2010: enhancement of effective regional cooperation. Together with the Asian Development Bank and World Wide Fund for Nature, project identification on environmental considerations for sustainable hydropower development was completed in 2007. The concept note for formulation of this project was drafted and supported by the four Member States and actual formulation will commence in 2008.

A training course for wetland mapping specialists was conducted in late August 2007. This was the second step in the updating of the basin-wide wetland map. Three national reports on the environmental impact of tourism were completed, and a fourth is to be finished in 2008. The regional report is expected to be completed by the end of 2008. Regarding integrated basin flow management activities, a planning workshop was held in May. The priority for 2007 was to initiate national pilot studies and conduct IBFM training. Collaboration with the WUP was stepped up on water quality guidelines as part of efforts to increase synergy between the various MRC programmes. The Environment Programme provided technical support for preparing technical guidelines and a methodology for selecting water quality criteria.

Since the last Council meeting, the programme has been able to address a number of transboundary issues related to environmental management in the Mekong River Basin. Training in the application of transboundary environmental risk assessment in the Chiang Rai–Bokeo region was completed with a joint Thai-Lao team, and in the Takeo- Chao Duc area of the Delta with a Vietnamese-Cambodian team. As part of the initiative to provide environmental information for general publication in the member countries, a Mekong River basin report card on ecological health and an indicative Mekong River report card on water quality were prepared. In addition, a diagnostic study of water quality in the Lower Mekong Basin and a bio-monitoring study were published as MRC technical reports. There was also an increase in the transfer of data to the riparian governments, with the capacity building programme initiated by IBFM passing on knowledge about holistic environmental flow assessment.

The Environment Programme document has been updated to bring it in line with the MRC Strategic Plan 2006-2010, the road map for riparianisation, and the Council instruction to include a component that addresses programme management. In 2007 the programme was funded by the governments of Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Nations Development Programme. In 2007 a new agreement with Sida provided a total of US$2.6 million for the period 2007-2009. In spite of this new agreement, however, the available funding for 2007-2010 is less than 40% of the amount required for all planned projects and activities. The programme has continued to implement reforms, moving towards a more standard MRC approach in personnel structure over the last year.