Protecting the Mekong River

Geographical location:

Asia/Pacific > Asia General

Asia/Pacific > East Asia > China
Asia/Pacific > Southeast Asia > Cambodia (Kampuchea)
Asia/Pacific > Southeast Asia > Lao People's Democratic Republic
Asia/Pacific > Southeast Asia > Myanmar (Burma)
Asia/Pacific > Southeast Asia > Thailand
Asia/Pacific > Southeast Asia > Vietnam

Summary

The Mekong is one of the world’s great rivers, sustaining millions of people with its rich fishery and fertile flood plains. Home to an estimated 1,300 species of fish, the wealth of its biodiversity is comparable to that of the Amazon River. Although overfishing is a major threat to the Mekong River’s, the most significant threat comes from development, particularly dams.

Working with the Mekong River Commission, the Asian Development Bank and at the country level, WWF is seeking to ensure that any real needs for additional hydropower energy can be met with the least environmental and social impacts. Conservation projects are also operating throughout the region in an effort to protect biodiversity for both people and wildlife.

Background

The Mekong River - a name that conjures a hundred images - flows for some 4,500 kilometres through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam before discharging into the South China Sea. Its catchment area - home to more than 60 million people - encompasses an extraordinary range of vegetation and geographical features.

Recent political upheavals in the Indochina region have, ironically, protected the Mekong basin from the dramatic changes in landscape and flood patterns that have damaged the ecology of many of the world’s rivers. The Mekong is still relatively intact.

But this offers a unique opportunity for it to become a model for sustainable development, with improving living standards that do not destroy the environment.

Objectives

1. Significantly reduce threats to sustainable livelihoods, biodiversity and social equity of the entire Mekong basin.

2. Ensure effective protection, management and, where necessary, restoration measures for critical species, habitats and ecosystems.

3. Help local people in targeted areas manage and use aquatic natural resources.

4. Assist stakeholders plan and implement long-term biodiversity conservation and sustainable use activities for the Mekong basin.

Solution

WWF recognizes that it is only one of the many organizations and actors involved in the Mekong basin, where there is an established framework for international cooperation.

To ensure that the LMP role is clearly defined and adds value to the overall management of the river basin, WWF has established formal agreements with different partners working on the river basin scale: the Asian Development Bank, the Mekong River Commission Secretariat and the World Conservation Union, among others.

LMP will also cooperate with the Japan Bank for International Cooperation and the Government of Vietnam on an innovative project to work together to improve the design and mitigate the impacts of a dam in the Huong River basin in central Vietnam.

Various WWF staff contribute to LMP planning, including the China, Indochina and Thailand Programme Offices, WWF country directors in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, the coordinator of the Asia/Pacific Climate Change Programme, the WWF International Asia/Pacific Programme and WWF International Living Waters Programme staff.