The Lower Mekong River Basin (Cambodia, Lao PDR, Thailand and Viet Nam) is home to approximately 60 million people. Floods along the Mekong every year have the potential to directly endanger life; do millions of dollars worth of damage to property; destroy livelihoods and crops; and put people at increased risk of poverty, malnutrition and disease. At the same time, they are an important and essential natural process, bringing water, nutrients and other benefits to floodplains, wetlands and ecosystems. Climate, and particularly the Southwest monsoon, is the immediate cause of the annual floods. Most basin inhabitants are poor rural farmer/fishers although they may be resource rich. One third of the population lives on less than a few dollars per day.

Being poor makes them more vulnerable to floods and flooding because the cheapest places to live are those which are mostly threatened by floods. Flood damage in the lower Mekong basin arises from a combination of direct losses due to the fact of inundation and secondary losses as a result of the suspension of normal economic activities in the commercial and service sectors which can accumulate long after the end of the event itself and until such time as damage is repaired and stocks and inventory replaced.

Assessing these figures in dollar terms reasonably accurately requires detailed surveys of pilot areas the results of which are then applied to the flood affected region on a loss per unit area basis. This is the methodology adopted in each country in the basin and from data available from the relevant National Disaster Management Agencies the losses that are estimated to arise in an average year amount to a regional total of US$ 76 million. The most destructive regional flood conditions of recent decades occurred in 2000 in the south of the basin and in 2008 in the northern parts. By far the larger overall damages occurred in 2000 and amounted to US$811 million, those of 2008 being much less at US$135 million.

Knowing the causes and the impacts of the Mekong floods, an important issue remains to be solved which is “how to get people ready for floods before they come” and “how to help people cope with floods”. The current status of flood management and mitigation in the Member Countries has improved considerably from “response to floods when they occur” rather than to prevent major damage or to be prepared in the forehand. However, the preparedness level backed with institutional coordination is yet to be fully achieved. To deal with the Mekong floods more effectively there is a need for continued support to strengthen the capacity of local disaster management authorities in flood preparedness and disaster risk reduction activities.

The Flood Management and Mitigation Programme (FMMP) of the MRC is a rolling programme that commenced operation in January 2005 and is funded to the total value of around US$20 million. The FMMP provides technical and coordination services to the four countries in the Lower Mekong Basin to prevent, minimize or mitigate the civil and socio-economic losses due to floods and flooding, while preserving the environmental benefits of floods. Forecasts, flood data, technical standards, capacity-building and training packages are key outputs of the programme. The programme has five components:

1. Establishment of a Regional Flood Centre

2. Structural Measures and Flood Proofing

3. Mediation of Transboundary Flood Issues

4. Flood Emergency Management Strengthening

5. Land Management

The Component 4 being implemented by Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC) as MRC implementing partner focuses on flood preparedness and strengthening flood emergency management in the four MRC Member Countries such as Cambodia, Lao PDR, Thailand and Viet Nam. The emphasis is on capacity building, knowledge sharing and public awareness campaigns at the provincial, district and community levels. With the continued support from the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) represented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) and the European Commission (EC) under the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection  (ECHO), the major focus has been to strengthen practical skills of key officials at provincial, district and commune disaster management committees to develop and implement the Flood Preparedness Programs (FPP). The core objective of the component 4 is to enhance technical capacities of relevant authorities and other stakeholders in all riparian countries (at the province, district and commune levels) in flood preparedness and emergency management, thus creating an enabling environment for a people centred approach towards integrated flood risk management.

The component 4 with funding support from GTZ (2004-2010) and with different DIPECHO South East Asia funding cycles of ECHO (2003-2010) has covered a total of 11 most flood provinces in the LMB with flood preparedness programs in 30 vulnerable districts.  The overall coverage is presented below in the table 1;

GEOGRAPHICAL COVERAGE
(Component 4 -Flood Preparedness and Emergency Management Strengthening) 

The core activities carried out under the Component since 2004 were to develop and implement innovative flood preparedness and emergency management activities at the sub-national level by addressing directly the needs of the flood vulnerable communities. This has increased communication, coordination and cooperation between these stakeholders, as well as the consistency of national disaster management and mitigation policy implementation of Member Countries. The overall activities are summarized in Table 2;

OVERALL ACTIVITIES
(Component 4 -Flood Preparedness and Emergency Management Strengthening)