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TRANSBOUNDARY WATER MANAGEMENTThe Mekong River Basin: practical experiencesin transboundary water managementHans Guttman, Chief Executive Officer, Mekong River Commission SecretariatThe Mekong River Basin covers almost 800,000 km 2 . Themain stem of the river stretches some 4,800 km from theglaciers in the Chinese Himalayas, through Myanmar,Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR), Thailand andCambodia, meeting the sea in the vast delta in southern VietNam. The river has high inter-seasonal variation in flows(varying up to fifty-fold between wet and dry seasons), fed by thesouth-west monsoon. The cycling of flooding and drought hascreated a rich ecology, but also difficult conditions for humansettlement. The Lower Mekong River Basin (LMB) comprisesover 60 million people.International cooperation in the use and development of the Mekong’swater was first formalized through the establishment of the MekongCommittee (MC) in 1957 under the auspices of the United Nations.The committee’s work was in part founded on the success of theTennessee Valley Authority in the United States, demonstrating howthe promotion of infrastructure development around water and othernatural resources can rapidly support development.The main focus of the MC was infrastructure developmentthrough the Indicative Basin Plan, which inthe 1970s proposed tributary and mainstream developmentin 180 projects. This included 700,000 hectares ofirrigation expansion and 3,300 MW of tributary hydropowerin the short term (10 years), and 17,000 MW ofhydropower, including mainstream dams and extendingnavigation by 800 km, in the long term.Lao PDR, Thailand and Viet Nam established theInterim Mekong Committee in 1977; Cambodia wasto be absent for 14 years, restricting further considerationof actions on the mainstream. In 1995 theMekong Agreement, a new treaty signed by Cambodia,Lao PDR, Thailand and Viet Nam, created the MekongRiver Commission (MRC) and provided a solid basisfor cooperation in the sustainable development of thebasin’s resources.In order to turn the Mekong Agreement into apractical framework for cooperation, MRC began toImage: MRCMekong overviewIf infrastructure development is promoted around water and other natural resources,it can rapidly support developmentSource: MRC[ 70 ]