CPWF Project Report
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CPWF Project Report Mekong Basin Focal Project: Final Report Project Number: PN58 Mac Kirby1, Chayanis Krittasudthacheewa2, Mohammed Mainuddin1, Eric Kemp-Benedict2, Chris Swartz2, Elnora de la Rosa2 1CSIRO Water for a Healthy Country 2Stockholm Environment Institute for submission to the August, 2009 Acknowledgements The Mekong Basin Focal Project was undertaken by the CSIRO, the Stockholm Environment Institute, the Mekong River Commission and the Japan International Research Centre for Agricultural Science. The project was partly funded by all of those organizations and partly by the Challenge Program on Water and Food. Program Preface The Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF) contributes to efforts of the international community to ensure global diversions of water to agriculture are maintained at the level of the year 2000. It is a multi-institutional research initiative that aims to increase water productivity for agriculture—that is, to change the way water is managed and used to meet international food security and poverty eradication goals—in order to leave more water for other users and the environment. The CPWF conducts action-oriented research in nine river basins in Africa, Asia and Latin America, focusing on crop water productivity, fisheries and aquatic ecosystems, community arrangements for sharing water, integrated river basin management, and institutions and policies for successful implementation of developments in the water-food- environment nexus. Project Preface The Mekong Basin Focal Project aims were to assess water use, water productivity and water poverty in the basin, and analyse the opportunities and risks of change in water management that influences water poverty. The main issue facing the Lower Mekong is not water availability (except for seasonally in certain areas such as northeast Thailand) but the impact of changed flows (which may result from dam or irrigation development or climate change) on ecology, fish production, access to water and food security. Poverty is generally decreasing in the Mekong, but the poorer people are not sharing in the improvements. Water governance and sharing of benefits is a key challenge for the Mekong. CPWF Project Report Series Each report in the CPWF Project Report series is reviewed internally by CPWF staff and researchers. The reports are published and distributed both in hard copy and electronically at www.waterandfood.org. Reports may be copied freely and cited with due acknowledgment. Before taking any action based on the information in this publication, readers are advised to seek expert professional, scientific and technical advice. Kirby, M., Krittasudthacheewa, C., Mainuddin, M., Kemp-Benedict, E., Swartz, C. and de la Rosa, E. 2009. Mekong Basin Focal Project: Final Report. Challenge Program on Water and Food, Colombo, Sri Lanka. Page | ii CPWF Project Report CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ....................................................................................................................1 1. INTRODUCTION ..............................................................................................................................9 1.1 OBJECTIVES OF THE CHALLENGE PROGRAM FOR WATER AND FOOD (CPWF) AND BASIN FOCAL PROJECTS (BFPS)..................................................................................................................9 1.2 STRUCTURE OF THE WORK.......................................................................................................10 1.3 STRUCTURE OF THE REPORT ....................................................................................................10 2. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE MEKONG AND KEY ISSUES ..............................................11 2.1 BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE MEKONG.....................................................................................11 2.2 KEY ISSUES ...............................................................................................................................13 2.2.1 Impacts of population growth and development ..................................................................13 2.2.2 Climate change ....................................................................................................................14 2.2.3 Ecological sustainability......................................................................................................14 2.2.4 Poverty and resource access................................................................................................15 2.3 IMPLICATIONS FOR THE MEKONG BASIN FOCAL PROJECT.....................................................16 3. WATER POVERTY: DISTRIBUTION, LIVELIHOODS, AND VULNERABILITY..............17 3.1 LITERATURE ...............................................................................................................................17 3.2 CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK .......................................................................................................17 3.2.1 The Sustainable Livelihoods framework ..............................................................................17 3.2.2 Poverty and water poverty ...................................................................................................18 3.2.3 Mapping water poverty ........................................................................................................20 3.3 POVERTY AND VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT OF LOWER MEKONG COUNTRIES....................21 3.3.1 Official poverty estimates - consumption or income as a measure of welfare .....................21 3.3.2 Vulnerability to food insecurity index ..................................................................................21 3.3.3 Vulnerability to natural disasters.........................................................................................22 3.4 MAPPING WATER POVERTY........................................................................................................22 3.4.1 Creating water poverty indicators for the Mekong Basin Focal Project .............................22 3.4.2 Median value method...........................................................................................................23 3.4.3 Bayesian method ..................................................................................................................23 3.4.4 Data and procedures............................................................................................................25 3.4.5 Results..................................................................................................................................29 3.5 CASE STUDIES FOR WATER POVERTY AND LIVELIHOODS ASSESSMENT ................................30 3.5.1 Specific objective..................................................................................................................31 3.5.2 Research partners ................................................................................................................31 3.5.3 Methodology ........................................................................................................................31 3.5.4 Results..................................................................................................................................32 3.6 ANALYSIS ON LIVELIHOODS, VULNERABILITY AND WATER CONSTRAINTS..........................37 3.6.1 A Bayesian approach to modeling livelihood dynamics.......................................................37 3.6.2 Features and limitation of Bayesian network models for modeling livelihoods...................38 3.6.3 Bayesian networks................................................................................................................38 3.6.4 A Model for Northeastern Thailand.....................................................................................41 3.6.5 Results..................................................................................................................................42 3.7 KEY FINDINGS ...........................................................................................................................43 3.7.1 Key findings from the model development ...........................................................................43 3.7.2 Key findings from the field studies that potentially apply beyond the specific field sites.....44 3.8 TOOL DEVELOPMENT.................................................................................................................44 3.9 OUTPUTS....................................................................................................................................45 3.10 KEY RECOMMENDATIONS........................................................................................................46 4. WATER AVAILABILITY ..............................................................................................................47 4.1 LITERATURE ...............................................................................................................................47 4.2 WATER ACCOUNTING ................................................................................................................48 4.2.1 Data .....................................................................................................................................48 4.2.2 Results..................................................................................................................................49 4.2.4 Analysis................................................................................................................................51