Mekong River Commission

MRC joins global research effort to produce more food with less water

MRC No.01/04
Bangkok, 10 March 2004

 

At a press conference to launch the CGIAR Challenge Programme on Water and Food in the Mekong region, scientists warned that countries in the Lower Mekong region will face escalating food scarcity and environmental degradation in the near future unless steps are taken to resolve current competition between water users. To address the problem, the Mekong River Commission has become a key partner of the Challenge Programme – an international research effort set up to address global water scarcity. US$10 million of Challenge Programme funds will be used in the Mekong River Basin where research projects will find innovative ways to produce more food using less water. The aim will be to contribute to the region’s economic development while safeguarding the unique biodiversity of the Mekong.

“There is a tension between the needs for agricultural production, which requires more water, and the fisheries production, which relies on the natural annual flood cycle in order for fish to reproduce,” said Mr DaoTrong Tu, Officer-in-charge of the Secretariat of the Mekong River Commission (MRC). “If present trends continue, much of the river basin population that depends on farming and fishing will be affected.”

Access to water is a major constraint to increasing crop production in the Lower Mekong Basin. Agriculture currently consumes 90 per cent of all water use in the Mekong River Basin, mainly for rice-growing, an extremely water-hungry activity. To produce one kilogram of rice requires three to five thousand litres of water, depending on the rice variety and type of irrigation used.

The Mekong Delta in Viet Nam already faces water availability problems during the driest months of February through to May. Seawater encroaches further up the rivers and canals of the Mekong Delta each year, spoiling the crops. Salinity barriers have been installed to prevent seawater incursion, but the situation will get worse as upstream abstractions increase.

More than 41% of the land area of the Lower Mekong Basin is used for agricultural production and the area under cultivation is steadily expanding to produce more food for the growing populations of Lao PDR, Thailand, Cambodia and Viet Nam. The population of the Lower Mekong Basin has doubled over the past 30 years and is estimated to grow by another 30 to 50 per cent by the year 2025.

The total food production scenario in the Mekong region is unique because of its high dependence on its inland fishery. The region is one of the most productive inland fisheries in the world, producing over 2 million tonnes of fish annually, much of it going straight to the stomachs of some of its poorest people. Any reduction in seasonal river flows is likely to affect this important food source. Already, a hydrological drought year on the Mekong in 2003 has severely affected fish catches in Cambodia this year. In February, the end of the peak season for the dai fishery (licensed bagnet operators), yields were reported at one-seventh the level of the previous year’s.

The Mekong projects funded through the Challenge Programme will study a wide range of topics related to food production and water use. In all, the Challenge Programme is funding eight projects focusing on agricultural productivity and efficiency of water use in the Mekong region, while another three projects have been approved subject to the availability of funds.

The winning submissions came from a range of CGIAR centres (the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research), the University of Chiang Mai and the Water Utilisation Programme of the Mekong River Commission. These are some of the ways in which the projects will contribute to the overall research aims:

• Design farming systems that can support a wide variety of crops along with fish and other food sources at the same time
• Develop improved technologies for rice-based cropping systems, with the aim of increasing yield without more water use.
• Develop rice varieties and rice-growing strategies that can cope with high levels of salinity. Such rice varieties anticipate higher levels of salinity in the Mekong River delta, and will contribute to maintaining the pace of development evident in this part of Viet Nam.
• Find ways to make more use of the Mekong’s seasonal floodwaters to cultivate fish and shrimp.
• Better understand and describe the physical and social systems of river basins. For example, one such project sets out to understand the ways in which deforestation will affect river flows.
• Propose management systems, tools and structures to better manage the complicated world of trans-national river basin and resource management.

Launched in Nairobi last year, the Challenge Programme is a global research programme spread across nine major river basins in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and South America. The river basins serve as living laboratories where the impacts of development can be clearly measured. Each basin has its own set of problems. In the Mekong River Basin, the challenge is how to achieve sustainable agricultural, fisheries and economic development, while alleviating poverty and preserving the unique environment and biodiversity of the basin.

The Challenge Programme is also studying the Nile, Limpopo, Volta, Sao Francisco, Karkheh, Indo-Gangetic, and Yellow River Basins, plus a network of river basins in the Andes.

Websites: Mekong River Commission at www.mrcmekong.org
Challenge Programme at www.waterforfood.org

 

 

 

 

 

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