Mekong River Commission

1. Introduction

The flooding of the Mekong River is a recurrent event. Every year the Lower Mekong Basin (LMB) experiences flooding, which has the potential to adversely affect economic and human activities, often claiming lives and causing damage to important infrastructure, human settlements and essential services. Whilst the regular flood cycle is seen as a source of livelihood, severe floods can have a devastating effect on the basin's efforts to improve economic development and reduce poverty. The negative effects of floods regularly counteract efforts for economic development and poverty reduction in various locations throughout the LMB, but, at the same time floods make an essential contribution to the wealth of biodiversity, abundance of fish and soil fertility.

Immediately following the severe flood of 2000, the Mekong River Commission Council instructed the Mekong River Commission Secretariat (MRCS) to prepare a Flood Management and Mitigation (FMM) Strategy using a highly participatory process of interaction with National Mekong Committees (NMC) and line agencies in the four riparian states, the donor community, International Organisations (IO) and Civil Society Organisations (CSO). The development objective of the MRC Flood Management and Mitigation Programme (FMMP) is: "to prevent, minimise or mitigate people's suffering and economic losses due to floods, while preserving the environmental benefits of floods". This objective is the key to a balanced approach to Flood Management and Mitigation (FMM) and reinforces the region's commitment to "living with floods".

This MRC Annual Flood Report 2005, the first flood report to be published at LMB level, was prepared as part of the MRC's Flood Management and Mitigation Programme (FMMP) at the RFMMC. This report is intended to be an account of the floods which occurred during 2005. It will serve as a source of information and as a reference document for the MRC Joint Committee and Council members and also for a wider audience, such as the agencies responsible for disaster management and mitigation in the MRC Members States, institutes involved in water resources planning, donor organisations, NGOs etc. As part of its programme activities the FMMP is scheduled to develop an Annual Flood Report from this year forward.

Over the past three years, each of the MRC's member countries has prepared an annual flood report to be presented during the Annual Mekong Flood Forum (the last forum was held in 2005). However often, while key information was provided, the usefulness of these reports was seriously limited by lack of standardisation and lack of consolidated overview and this has hindered a clear understanding of the flood events throughout the Lower Mekong Basin.

The preparation of this MRC Annual Flood Report 2005 is the result of a joint exercise which integrates the views of a wide range of stakeholders involved in or affected by floods in the Mekong River Basin. The key objective of this exercise is to attempt to make this report as coherent and as "standardised" as possible in order for the reader to get the most comprehensive picture of the flood issues, benefits and stakes.

In the future, a more comprehensive report should be developed step-by-step, by monitoring the flood events according to standardised procedures during the flood period. It will be important to organise data flow in such a way that the writing of the annual flood report should eventually be an easy exercise of consolidating all the various information collected. It may take time to establish those common monitoring procedures in the four countries, but building this system, step by step, and gradually obtaining a better knowledge of the actual flood issues and stakes in the Mekong River is an essential tool when designing flood management and mitigation strategies and investments.

This annual flood report 2005 is produced with funds from the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Hanoi, Vietnam, for component 1 of the Flood Management and Mitigation Programme of MRCS.