Politics and Development of the Mekong River Basin: Transboundary Dilemmas and Participatory Ambitions

TitlePolitics and Development of the Mekong River Basin: Transboundary Dilemmas and Participatory Ambitions
Annotated RecordNot Annotated
Year of Publication2012
AuthorsÖjendal, Jensen M
Secondary AuthorsÖjendal, Hansson, Hellberg
Secondary TitlePolitics and Development in a Transboundary Watershed: The Case of the Lower Mekong Basin
Pagination37-59
PublisherSpringer
Place PublishedDordrecht, Heidelberg, London, New York
Key themesFraming Concepts in Water Governance, Hydropower, Transboundary Governance
Abstract

The chapter takes a two-pronged approach. Firstly it reviews the fundamentals of the Mekong Basin system, providing a broad overview of the natural system and its basic water regime and from there defines the key developmental and governance challenges. Secondly, it performs a historical odyssey in order to assess which previous attempts have been made to regulate the system, and what we have learnt from them. At its core we find three contemporary tools developed to accommodate a sharpening regional politics with urgent development imperatives, all emanating from the MRC. These are the Water Utilization Project (WUP), the IWRM Strategic Framework, and the Basin Development Plan (BDP). They are scrutinized before we conclude that the MRC-agreement, as well as these three tools, have delivered valuable input to basin governance. Simultaneously we are pointing out that they have not provided the final solution for how to deal with the accelerating urge for exploitation of the system’s natural resources.

URLhttps://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-007-0476-3_3
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