Review of the Decentralisation of Core River Basin Management Function Activities Undertaken for the Mekong River Commission as part of the Mid-Term review of the Strategic Plan 2016-2020 22 February 2019 Table of Contents Executive Summary .................................................................................................................................. i Overall Recommendations ...................................................................................................................... v Specific Actions for each Activity ........................................................................................................... vi 1.0 Introduction to decentralisation and approach to this review ............................................... 1 2.0 Implementation Modalities .................................................................................................... 4 3.0 Implementation Status ........................................................................................................... 7 3.1 Overall progress .................................................................................................................. 7 3.2 Summary of performance for each activity ...................................................................... 10 4.0 Success Factors ..................................................................................................................... 15 5.0 Summary of issues and challenges ....................................................................................... 16 6.0 Overall recommendations to address the issues .................................................................. 25 7.0 Conclusions ........................................................................................................................... 32 8.0 Activity-by-Activity assessment ............................................................................................ 33 8.1 Monitoring near real time hydro-meteorological parameters (HYCOS stations) ............. 33 8.2 Manual monitoring of rainfall and water levels (other hydro-met stations) ................... 47 8.3 Discharge measurement and sediment monitoring ......................................................... 55 8.4 Routine water quality monitoring ..................................................................................... 62 8.5 Ecological health monitoring ............................................................................................ 67 8.6 Fisheries monitoring ......................................................................................................... 72 8.7 Field data collection for SIMVA ......................................................................................... 77 8.8 Ad-hoc provision of socio-economic data for basin planning ........................................... 81 8.9 Preparation and coordination of NIPs for basin planning ................................................ 85 Attachment A – Stakeholders consulted for this review .................................................................. 89 Attachment B – Lists of monitoring stations and sampling locations .............................................. 91 List of Tables Table 1: Core River Basin Management Function activities agreed for decentralisation ...................................... 1 Table 2: Estimated annual costs (USD) for Member Countries to implement decentralised monitoring activities not including regional costs for MRCS coordination, support and activity improvement ..................................... 3 Table 3: Performance indicators applied to financial and technical handover of CRBMF activities to MCs .......... 3 Table 4: Planned financial handover schedule (Member Country contributions) to decentralised activities from 2016-2022, as at December 2018 ........................................................................................................................... 8 Table 5: Summary of financial and technical handover performance of each decentralized activity as rated by MRCS in November 2017 and by the MTR team in December 2018 and projected to 2019 and 2020 ............... 11 Table 6: Summary of the implementation status of decentralised activities between 2016 and 2018 ............... 14 Table 7: Summary of the key issues for each decentralised activity .................................................................... 24 Table 8: Number of operational HYCOS stations in each country and the whole network from 2012 to 2018 .. 35 Table 9: Summary of the status of monitoring near real-time hydro-meteorological parameters, key issues and potential solutions ................................................................................................................................................ 45 Table 10: Additional rainfall and water level stations to improve accuracy of river flood forecasting and flash flood guidance ...................................................................................................................................................... 50 Table 11: Summary of the status of manual monitoring of rainfall and water levels, key issues and potential solutions ............................................................................................................................................................... 53 Table 12: Instrumentation used at each of the DSMP sites ................................................................................. 55 Table 13: Summary of the status of discharge measurement and sediment monitoring and the key issues and potential solutions ................................................................................................................................................ 59 Table 14: Monitoring parameters analysed under the routine water quality monitoring activity ...................... 62 Table 15: Summary of the status of routine water quality monitoring and the key issues and potential solutions .............................................................................................................................................................................. 65 Table 16: Summary of the status of ecological health monitoring and the key issues and potential solutions .. 70 Table 17: Types of regional fisheries monitoring ................................................................................................. 72 Table 18: Summary of the status of fisheries monitoring and key issues and potential solutions ...................... 75 Table 19: Summary of status of the SIMVA survey and the key issues and potential solutions .......................... 79 Table 20: Summary of the status of the ad-hoc provision of socio-economic data and the key issues and potential solutions ................................................................................................................................................ 83 Table 21: Summary of the status of preparation and coordination of NIPs for basin planning and description of the key issues and potential solutions .................................................................................................................. 88 List of Figures Figure 1: (a) Station and (b) data transmission performance of HYCOS stations overall and for each Member Country from 2014 to 2018 as indicated by the percentage of stations fully operational, and the percentage of total data items successfully transmitted ............................................................................................................. 35 Figure 2: Xayaburi monitoring stations: left and middle picture shows new Xayaburi station directly next to existing MRC station, right picture shows radar level sensor on road bridge upstream of Xayaburi dam .......... 40 Figure 3: Locations of existing hydrological stations in (a) Cambodia including Mekong HYCOS, JICA stations and ADB automatic telemetry stations; and (b) the Mekong Delta in Viet Nam including manual and Mekong- HYCOS stations (Source: via CNMC and VNMC) ................................................................................................... 40 Figure 4: Full hydro-meteorological network in the Lower Mekong Basin .......................................................... 43 Figure 5: Performance of manual reporting from HYCOS stations in terms of (a) the proportion of on-time data arrival; and (b) the proportion of total data arriving ............................................................................................ 49 Mid-Term Review Team The mid-term review of the Mekong River Commission’s Strategic Plan 2016-2020 was conducted by Mr Jeremy Bird, Ms Klomjit Chandrapanya, and Dr Benjamin Docker, with the support of Ms Nguyen Thi Phuong Lam and Mr Nguyen Nhan Quang on the decentralisation component that is the focus of this report. A separate Mid-Term Review report covers the full scope of the Strategic Plan 2016-2020 and includes the overall findings and recommendations from this decentralisation component. Acknowledgements The Mid-Term Review team would like to thank the large number of individuals who generously contributed their time, providing input and resources for this review. In particular, the staff of the Mekong River Commission Secretariat and officials from National Mekong Committee Secretariats and line agencies in each country. A list of ministries, agencies and other stakeholders consulted for this review is at Attachment A. Some