Mekong River Commission-May 15
Fisheries, delta, wetland, lake and river basins management – officials and community members from Cambodia, Lao PDR, Thailand and Viet Nam working on transboundary water issues kicked off a multimedia project last week with regional workshops in Phnom Penh and discussed how to showcase bilateral cooperation over these issues.
The multimedia products, a combination of informative videos, photos and text, will portray transboundary cooperation initiatives, achievements and challenges of the five bilateral projects, namely the fisheries project along the Mekong and Sekong rivers; the Sesan-Srepok river basins project; the Mekong Delta project; the Lao-Thai wetlands project; and the Cambodian-Thai sister lakes project.
It will also illustrate the impacts the projects have on livelihoods along the riverine communities and highlight the coordinated multi-sectoral management approach, known as integrated water resources management, to promote efficient use of water and related resources and protection of aquatic ecosystems.
“This is a very useful initiative that can help us reach out to more people and visually convey information about cooperative efforts made by the Mekong countries to address water management issues,” said Viet Nam’s Senior Program Officer Tran Minh Khoi, who joined the multimedia workshops in Phnom Penh.
With support of the Mekong River Commission’s (MRC) communication staff and multimedia consultants, the project teams jointly finalized narratives of project’s success stories, identified potential interviewees and shooting locations, and mapped out shooting routes in the five transboundary project areas in the four Mekong countries.
The teams agreed that a total of 6-11 stories and 11 video clips along with a number of photos will be produced, with a focus on bilateral cooperation to increase fish stock in the Mekong-Sekong rivers, improve flood-drought management and overall water cooperation in the border provinces of Cambodia and Viet Nam, and promote knowledge sharing for better management of wetlands and lake resources.
The multimedia team will go on filming missions later this month, starting from Thailand’s Songkhla Lake basin and ending in Mekong-Sekong rivers in Lao PDR in September.
The final products are expected to be released gradually between June and October through the MRC website, social media and other communications channels and platforms.
The multimedia initiative is realized with financial support from the World Bank through the MRC’s Mekong Integrated Water Resources Management Project (M-IWRMP) that facilitates cross-border dialogue among the four Mekong countries for better management of the shared water and related resources. Under the transboundary component, the five projects were launched in 2013 and 2014 and are slated for completion by the end of this year.
“This is the best time to share milestones the projects have accomplished with the public,” said MRC’s M-IWRM Specialist Piriya Uraiwong. “We hope it will help enhance understanding of transboundary water issues and promote local participation in managing the invaluable resources.
