DRR-Team Mission Report Myanmar – Kayin & Mon State 6 December 2019 6 December 2019 DRR-Team Scoping Mission, Final Report Flood control in Kayin & Mon State, Myanmar DRR-Team Scoping Mission Kayin & Mon State, Final Report, 6 December 2019 i DRR-TEAM MYANMAR Document title Scoping report to Kayin and Mon State Status Final Draft Date 6 December 2019 Project name DRR Mission to Myanmar Reference DRR-Team Scoping Mission Kayin & Mon State, Final Report, 6 December 2019 ii SUMMARY A DRR (Dutch Risk Reduction-Team) scoping mission visited Myanmar on request of the acting Director General of DWIR after the floods of August 2019. Through a series of meetings, site visits and interviews in affected areas in Mon and Kayin State, the team has made a number of observations and recommendations, which were presented to the stakeholders in Myanmar and are summarized below. Specific recommendations made for the visited townships are given in the following pages. Observations • Disaster management in Mon and Kayin State is very well organized. The response to the flooding was effective. • Spatial planning – that prevent new developments in flood prone areas - is not in place. • Available infrastructure (capacity, expertise, data, IT) to support decision making on the development of flood protection measures is insufficient. Recommendations • Make use of open and freely available data sets to improve early warning and make a head start with the development of flood hazard and risk maps. • National organizations must ensure that relevant information (for example on expected extreme rainfall) reaches the townships in time. • A capacity needs assessment resulting in a capacity building plan is required for all levels in the administration. Capacity building must at least include: o How to collect and interpret data and quality control o Principles of flood hazard and flood risk mapping and making it practical at state and township level o Flood-proof constructions in townships o International best practices to deal with land ownership challenges in relation to flood protection and put this in context of Myanmar o Involve Myanmar universities and students in collaboration with Dutch universities, knowledge institutes and companies in surveys, mapping and studies, to support the development of water officials for the future • Infrastructure (IT, equipment, expertise, etc.) must be implemented to execute discharge & sediment measurements, derive rating curves, quality control • Strengthen collaboration between disaster management and water management departments, in particular in terms of (flood-based) spatial planning, infrastructure and protection measures. • Prepare a roadmap how to arrive to a Decision Support System framework. This DSS enables evidence-based decision making and compare strategies and scenarios. • Dredging and shortcutting river bends is not always an effective or sustainable measure for flood risk reduction. Measures that interfere with river dynamics, must be carefully examined on their effectiveness. DRR-Team Scoping Mission Kayin & Mon State, Final Report, 6 December 2019 iii CONTENTS 1 INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 Background of the mission 1 1.2 Structure of the report 3 2 OBSERVATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THE FIELD VISITS 4 2.1 Introduction 4 2.2 Bilin 4 2.3 Hpa-An 6 2.4 Mawlamyine 8 2.5 Ye Town 9 2.6 Other observations 11 2.7.1 Main road Hpa-An - Mawlamyine 11 2.7.2 Landslide in Thae Phyu Kone village (Paung Township) 12 2.7.3 Observations on disaster management (preparedness and response) 12 2.7.4 Observations on governance 13 2.7.5 Observations on capacity 13 2.7.6 Improved hydromet monitoring and forecast 14 3 TOWARDS INTEGRATED FLOOD RISK MANAGEMENT 15 3.1 Introduction 15 3.2 Conceptual framework for FRM 15 3.3 Multi-level safety approach 16 3.4 Multilevel safety approach Mon and Kayin State 17 3.5 Bringing Flood Risk Management into practice 17 3.6 Roles and responsibilities with regards to FRM 18 3.7 Assessment of existing situation in Mon and Kayin State 19 3.8 Nature Based Solutions 20 DRR-Team Scoping Mission Kayin & Mon State, Final Report, 6 December 2019 iv 4 RECOMMENDATIONS 21 5 POTENTIAL FOLLOW-UP 23 ANNEX A – DUTCH RISK REDUCTION 24 ANNEX B – DRR-TEAM MEMBERS 25 ANNEX C – TERMS OF REFERENCE 27 ANNEX D – REQUEST FOR SUPPORT 28 ANNEX E – PROGRAMME 29 ANNEX F – RESULTS FROM THE FIELD VISITS 31 ANNEX G –MINUTES OF MEETINGS AND FIELD VISITS 50 ANNEX H – FLOOD RISK MANAGEMENT STRATEGY 86 ANNEX I – MYANMAR UNIFIED PLATFORM FOR DISASTER RISK APPLICATION 89 ANNEX J – WATER AND DISASTER MANAGEMENT IN MYANMAR 90 ANNEX K – INSTITUTIONAL SET-UP 98 ANNEX L – DEMONSTRATION OF TOOLS FOR THANLWIN DREDGING OPERATIONS 102 ANNEX M – NATURE BASED SOLUTIONS IN MYANMAR 105 ANNEX N – SAMA INTEGRATED FLOOD MANAGEMENT SIMULATION GAME 109 DRR-Team Scoping Mission Kayin & Mon State, Final Report, 6 December 2019 v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AIRBM : Ayeyarwady Integrated River Basin Management Project DDM : Department of Disaster Management DMH : Department of Meteorology and Hydrology DRD : Department of Rural Development DRR : Dutch Risk Reduction DWIR : Directorate of Water Resources and Improvement of River Systems FRM : Flood Risk Management GAD : General Administration Department IADS : Integrated Ayeyarwady Delta Strategy IFC : International Finance Corporation IWRM : Integrated Water Resources Management IWUMD : Irrigation and Water Utilization Management Department JICA : Japan International Cooperation Agency MMU : Myanmar Maritime University MOALI : Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation MOC : Ministry of Construction MOPF : Ministry of Planning and Finance MOTC : Ministry of Transport and Communication MoU : Memorandum of Understanding MSWRR : Minister of Social Warfare, Relief, and Resettlement NCDDP : National Community Driven Development Project NWRC : National Water Resources Committee SEA : implemented Strategic Environmental Assessment UNDP : United Nations Development Programme YCDC : Yangon City Development Committee YTU : Yangon Technological University DRR-Team Scoping Mission Kayin & Mon State, Final Report, 6 December 2019 vi 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background of the mission Heavy flooding in Mon State in Myanmar, resulted in displacement (in early August 2019) of about 26.000 people from 14 townships across the state. This number increased, by the middle of August, to more than 120.000 people for whole Myanmar. The river basins that were mostly affected were Bilin river basin and Thanlwin river basin in Mon State, with Ye town as the most severely affected urban area. 90% of the township area was flooded and over 7000 people stayed in refugee camps. Also in Mon state, many bridges and roads have been damaged by flash floods. A landslide occurred in Thae Phyu Kone village in the Paung township with (as was reported later) 73 casualties. The landslide occurred at 08:00 in the morning of 9th August 2019. In the weekend of August 10, VP 2 (Vice president 2, Chairperson of National Disaster Management committee) and Minister for Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement Ministry (Deputy Chair of National Disaster Management committee) have visited the areas affected by flooding and landslides. 293.5 million kyats (US$194,338) on food and basic items for evacuees was reserved. Figure 1 Bilin river catchment and Thanlwin river lower catchment On the 13th of August, a message from the Ministry of Transport and Communications, Directorate of Water Resources and Improvement of River Systems, was sent to the Dutch government with a request for technical support in the form of a DRR mission (see Annex D). In the request for support it is stated that “We’d like to have technical support from your Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) Team on the potential flood and landslide locations at the recently suffered locations and short-term, medium- term and long-term measures for Flood mitigation and land slide prevention to avoid potential losses by flood and land slide in those areas.” Disaster management in Myanmar is divided into four stages: the normal (non-disaster) stage, the warning stage, the disaster response stage, and the rehabilitation stage. The Disaster Risk Reduction action plan from 2017 defined many priority actions with regard to different disasters like earthquakes, DRR-Team Scoping Mission Kayin & Mon State, Final Report, 6 December 2019 1 cyclones, floods and landslides. Three actions are directly related to flooding. The following is relevant to mention in relation to the observations of the DRR mission to Kayin and Mon State: The action defined as ‘Tsunami, floods, cyclone and storm surge risk assessment in particular focusing on Ayeyarwady Region and Rakhine State’ led by DMH and DDM in the co-lead. In 2017 the focus was in particular on these areas, Mon and Kayin State were not mentioned so also funding for flood protection to these areas is limited. For more information on Water and Disaster Management in Myanmar see Annex J. The long term objective of the DRR-mission is to contribute to the reduction of the impact of flooding in the river basins of the Bilin and Thanlwin (sometimes also called Salween) catchment see Figure 1. To that effect, we need to understand the catchment behavior (hydrology, hydraulics, morphology, structures, tidal impact). Figure 2: Areas visited during the DRR mission in coloured dots (yellow, green, red, white). For bigger maps of each area see Chapter 2 ‘Field Visits’. Geographical focus includes recent flooded areas: 1. Bilin river catchment/basin area (Bilin township), 2. Lower Thanlwin river catchment/basin (Mawlamyine city, Hpa-An, Kyaikmaraw township) and Ye township see Figure 2. The objectives for this mission were: • To identify the drivers and key causes of the floods • To identify non-structural measures to mitigate the impact of flood, by improving the disaster management operations, early warning, enhancing awareness • To formulate measures (no regret, midterm, long term) to improve river basin management and flood protection as part of an integrated sustainable solution, locally as well as on a larger scale. • To assess to what extent further capacity building within the agencies involved is required to implement the recommendations.