Mekong Region FuturesLocation: Mekong Region Contact: Alex.Smajgl@csiro.auResearch question: What are the region-wide ecological, social and economic consequences of energy-food-water-related investments and how might governance of these investments be improved to support justice, equity, fairness and sustainability? What is the project doing?For this project, the Mekong Region is taken to encompass Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, and China’s Yunnan Province. Vast, diverse and dynamic, the region covers 2.3 million square kilometres and is home to more than 260 million people, with a myriad of ethnicities and cultures. Investment decisions about energy, food and water are driven by multiple sectoral development agendas and partly responding to climate change while contributing to:
Stakeholders include national and sub-national agencies responsible for planning and investment, water use, power generation and food security. These stakeholders represent only national and sub-national interests in mostly narrow sectoral boundaries. Using local and regional future scenarios, we are helping them understand how the drivers listed above affect the interaction of energy, food and water—what we call the ‘nexus’. Our aim is to inform their thinking of the possible consequences and unintended side-effects across sectors and across national boundaries. This understanding will inform and influence their investment decisions about the sustainable production, distribution, and use of energy, food and water. Better policy and investment decisions will, in turn, improve people’s wellbeing and the sustainable development of the Mekong Region. We are operating at both the local and regional scale. Local research organisations are undertaking local studies, working closely with in-country government decision makers. At the regional scale, CSIRO and local researchers are analysing the dynamics of energy, food and water. Our ability to engage decision makers up to national level is contingent on strong local partnerships. We are working with key Mekong-based partners to identify the most appropriate entry points and political processes for our work to make the most beneficial contributions. What will the project produce?Working collaboratively with stakeholders, we are developing exploratory local and regional cross-sectoral scenarios that support cross-scale and cross-sectoral dialogue and improve stakeholders’ understanding of the likely consequences of decisions. The scenarios represent visions shared across multiple relevant sectors allowing for consensus-building coordination. Additionally, scenarios embed visions from other places within the Mekong region and facilitate implicitly a coordination of trans-boundary development. Scenarios are implemented at local and regional levels. Scientific evidence for what consequences a selected list of (national and regional) development strategies are likely to have. This research integrates across hydrological, agricultural, social and economic domains and, where appropriate, is supported by modelling to test critical relationships. Large scale household surveys provide a robust dataset to ground-truth decision makers’ assumption on human adaptation responses and help fine-tuning development strategies. How can the project make a difference to development?Stakeholders engaged in the research process will have a good understanding of the importance of the interaction of the energy, food and water dimensions and how it can inform planning and policy development. They will be able to communicate this to other parties, leading to improved thinking on future development trajectories. Project completion date: December 2012See also: http://www.csiro.au/science/MekongFutures.html
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