A Risk-Based Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis Approach to Evaluating Transboundary Water Development—The Case of Lower Mekong River Basin

Abstract

The Lower Mekong River basin (LMB) covers the lower part of the Mekong river basin, including Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. Due to numerous pressures from high population growth and intensive hydropower development, the LMB has been facing significant challenges concerning its biodiversity and ecosystem. In 2017, Mekong River Commission (MRC), an intergovernmental organisation founded in 1995 among LMB countries, established the Council Study, which analysed the impacts of water development scenarios concerning the environmental, socioeconomic aspects of the LMB. This paper explores the nature of risks to the LMB water development and subsequently evaluates LMB's water development scenarios described in the Council Study by using a multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) method. MCDA method has been widely applied in the field of water resource management in order to assist the decision-making process by systematically evaluating a certain number of alternatives against well-selected criteria through a preference rating scheme. By implementing a risk-based comprehensive assessment of the LMB transboundary water, this study provides insights into the impacts of the increasing risks to the ecosystem and human beings on the water development of the basin over time, which assists to change the awareness and the perspective toward humans' risks and transboundary river ecosystem of decision-makers. This paper provides valuable recommendations for MRC to improve their policy concerning benefit-sharing scheme, water planning and risk mitigation strategies.

Multilingualism for pluralising knowledge and decision making about people and nature relationships

“…Water management constitutes a good example as the field tends to be dominated by expert voices and technical solutions (Conca, 2005), despite calls for integrating more diverse framings and for tackling biases linked to the interrelations between power and knowledge (Brugnach et al, 2017). Transboundary issues in water governance such as international risk management in the Lower Mekong Basin (Lan, 2021) highlight the need to work on an inclusive and transparent multilingual vocabulary to serve as a solid basis for discussions when linguistic and sociocultural worlds collide in the quest for a common sustainable use of a necessary resource like water.…”