Table 1.3 (modified from Hirsch and Cheong, 1996) provides a summary of regional, institutional evolution in the management of the Mekong Basin as an entity.
The Committee for Coordination of the Comprehensive Development of the Lower Mekong Basin, or Mekong Committee as it became known, was established through funding provided by the United Nation’s Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East, ECAFE, in order to catalyse development of the Basin and to increase per capita income of the riparian countries (ECAFE, 1957). The United Nations Development Programme, UNDP, has been a major and consistent supporter of the Committee since its inception. Some have considered the Committee as a type of Marshall Plan for mainland Southeast Asia (Jacobs, 1995). As a consequence, the Committee and its successors have both coordinated resource management in the Basin and channelled development assistance to approved projects. This dual role has been seen by some as a potential conflict of interest.
The US Army Corps of Engineers and the US Bureau of Reclamation have long been interested in large scale engineering works on the Mekong and its tributaries. They saw the annual flooding of millions of hectares of Mekong lowlands as the major impediment to modernizing the region’s agriculture (Gráiner Ryder in Sluiter, 1993). Their solution was to propose impoundment of water in large storage dams, from which controlled releases would feed all-year-round, export-crop production and would generate income-earning hydropower.
The Corps report (United Nations, 1958), together with the Basin Indicative Plan (Mekong Secretariat, 1970), which was a synthesis of earlier projects, formed the basis for planned Basin development. The Mekong Committee and its successors have been seen by some critics as being progeny of the Corps of Engineers, having a “one dimensional”
preoccupation with infrastructure construction, despite the existence of contemporary studies of the non-engineering aspects of Basin development (White, 1963).
TABLE 1.3. Evolution of institutional arrangements for the management of the Mekong Basin Year Institutional Development
1957 Formation of Mekong Committee 1970 Indicative Basin Plan
1971 Nam Ngum Dam Completed
1975 Cambodia withdraws from Mekong Commission 1978 Interim Mekong Committee established
1987 Revised Indicative Basin Plan
1992 ADB commences Greater Mekong Subregion Initiative
1994 Hanoi agreement on Cooperation for the Sustainable Development of the Mekong River Basin
Year Institutional Development
1995 “Run-of-River” mainstream hydropower dams proposed Mekong River Commission established
1999 Restructuring of the Secretariat to achieve its goals
The withdrawal of Cambodia under Pol Pot regime forced the Mekong Committee into abeyance in 1975. In order to fill the vacancy, Vietnam, Thailand and Laos formed the Interim Mekong Committee in 1978. This remained almost dormant until the mid 1980’s when a Revised Indicative Plan was developed and released (Interim Mekong Committee, 1988). Disagreements arose in the early 1990’s on the procedures under which one member country could veto plans of another and also on the conditions for the re-entry of Cambodia.
1.7.1 The Mekong River Commission
The Mekong River Commission came into being in 1995 after UNDP-sponsored meetings culminated in the signing of the draft of the Agreement on the Cooperation for the Sustainable Development of the Mekong River Basin, on 28 November 1994. The four lower Mekong riparian countries endorsed this draft Hanoi agreement. It was based on the principles of sovereign equality, territorial integrity and environmental protection to enable the four signatory countries to use the resources of the Mekong in a reasonable and equitable manner. The Agreement provided freedom of navigation throughout the mainstream Mekong to promote regional cooperation and development. Importantly, it allowed for adding new members to the Commission, but removed the right of individual country veto.
The four countries also adopted the concept of a Basin Development Plan to identify and prioritize joint and basin-wide projects for action. Geography, hydrology, environment, climate and the rights and interest of all riparian countries were to be accommodated in the Plan. It has been seen by some as significant that the UNDP press release on the Agreement failed to mention the rights and interests of riparian citizens of the Basin when it recognised the need to harness the “destructive power of the River during peak wet seasons.”
The mandate of the Mekong River Commission is:
To cooperate and promote in a constructive and mutually beneficial manner in the sustainable development, utilization, conservation and management of the Mekong River water and related resources for navigational and non- navigational purposes for social and economic development and well-being of all riparian States, consistent with the need to protect, preserve, enhance and manage the environmental and aquatic conditions and maintenance of the ecological balance exceptional to this river basin.
The Commission’s vision for the Basin is:
An economically prosperous, socially just and environmentally sound Mekong River Basin.
The mission of the Commission is:
To promote and coordinate sustainable management and development of water and related resources for the countries’ mutual benefit and the people’s well-being by implementing strategic programmes and activities and providing scientific information and policy advice (Mekong River Commission, 1999).
The Mekong River Commission consists of three permanent bodies. There are: the Council, at Ministerial and Cabinet level which makes policies, decisions, and resolves differences;
the Joint Committee at permanent secretary level to carry out policies; and the Secretariat, responsible for technical and administrative support for the Council and the day-to-day operations of the Commission. The priorities of the Council can be judged from the work programme of the Secretariat which concentrates on four major areas of work: policy and planning; environment and monitoring; resources development and management; and programme support (Mekong River Commission Secretariat,1995, Mekong River Commission, 1999). More recently the Commission has reorganised its work into three programmes (Mekong River Commission, http://www.mrcmekong.org/programme; 2002):
• The Core Programmes consisting of :
− the Basin Development Plan
− the Water Utilisation Programme
− the Environment Programme.
• Support Programmes which sustain the implementation of other MRC programmes through a Capacity Building Programme.
• The Sector Programmes focus on specific sectors and address regional issues that are significant to the management of the entire Mekong River Basin. There are 5 Sector Programmes:
− the Fisheries Programme.
− the Agriculture, Irrigation and Forestry Programme.
− the Water Resources and Hydrology Programme.
− the Navigation Programme.
− the Tourism Programme
The Secretariat’s Water Resources and Hydrology Programme, a key programme in the overall planning and management of the Basin, has four main components: monitoring; real- time forecasting; planning and design; and applications. Present and planned projects of the programme include improvement of the Basin-wide hydrometeorological network, groundwater investigations, flood forecasting and damage reduction, upgrading of salinity intrusion forecasting in the Mekong Delta, water balance of the lower Mekong Basin, Phase IV and Mekong morphology and sediment transport. The Programme is seeking funds for several of these projects.
The early 1990’s also saw sweeping changes in natural resource management within member countries. The most significant of these was the creation of ministries specifically concerned with the environment in each of the member countries. In order to meet these changing circumstances the Secretariat was restructured in 1999. Its operational structure is shown in Fig. 1.3 (Mekong River Commission, 1999).
Fig. 1.3 Operational structure of the Mekong River Commission Secretariat (Mekong River Commission, 1999)