• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
• /
• 2012.05a
• /
• pp.37-37
• /
• 2012

The study aims to evaluate the complexity of relationships between the riparian states - China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia - in the Mekong River Basin since the mid-1990s with special reference to the discourse on hydropower development. A special emphasis will be put on the influence of China on hydropower development. Although a variety of issues on the river basin have been discussed among the riparian states, none of them has been effectively implemented owing to the lack of China's commitment to the discussions for sustainable water management. Now, a new turning point is observed in the region with emergence of the issue on hydropower development, not only in the upper basin but also in the lower basin. The discourse on hydropower in Mekong has quickly drawn attention of the public, accelerated by the onset of construction of the Xayabury Dam in Laos since November 2010. The influence of China as the upstream country with its political, economic, and military power has increasingly grown in the region over the last few decades, and such trend recently intensifies together with an expansion of Chinese commercial interests in the region. Since the establishment of the Mekong River Commission (MRC) in 1995, the four MRC members have striven to push forward a sustainable use of water resources in the basin. But the legitimacy of the MRC system has been eroded due to the lack of participation by Myanmar and China, and in particular, the Chinese absence has made the four riparian states blind about the change of water regime due to the Chinese dams upstream. Environmental damages due to hydropower development might be possible, including a drop of fish yields, crop production, and damages to the river's ecosystems. Vietnam and Cambodia have already expressed their concerns over the dam construction towards China as well as Laos by pointing out detrimental impacts of the dams to their economies. China's move to collaborate with the other riparian states since 2010 has given a positive signal in terms of sustainable water management in the river. However, this phenomenon never confirms China's proactive contribution to the cooperative activities within the framework of the MRC system. Laos' initiative to build a new dam in the lower basin alarms those who are opposed to dam construction in the fear of its far-reaching damages to the environment. The question goes back to the year-long debate on policy priorities given to economic growth or the environment. The riparian states require wisdom based on a consensus about sustainable water use rather than hydropower development based on individual growth dreams.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
• /
• 2005.09a
• /
• pp.731-732
• /
• 2005

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
• /
• v.60 no.1
• /
• pp.47-57
• /
• 2018

This study implemented the rainfall-runoff analysis of the Mekong River basin using the SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool). The runoff analysis was simulated for 2000~2007, and 11 parameters were calibrated using the SUFI-2 (Sequential Uncertainty Fitting-version 2) algorithm of SWAT-CUP (Calibration and Uncertainty Program). As a result of analyzing optimal parameters and sensitivity analysis for 6 cases, the parameter ALPHA_BF was found to be the most sensitive. The reproducibility of the rainfall-runoff results decreased with increasing number of stations used for parameter calibration. The rainfall-runoff simulation results of Case 6 showed that the RMSE of Nong Khai and Kratie stations were 0.97 and 0.9, respectively, and the runoff patterns were relatively accurately simulated. The runoff patterns of Mukdahan and Khong Chaim stations were underestimated during the flood season from 2004 to 2005 but it was acceptable in terms of the overall runoff pattern. These results suggest that the combination of SWAT and SWAT-CUP models is applicable to very large watersheds such as the Mekong for rainfall-runoff simulation, but further studies are needed to reduce the range of modeling uncertainty.

• Ocean Systems Engineering
• /
• v.12 no.4
• /
• pp.403-411
• /
• 2022

Annually, about 48-60% of sediment discharge of the Mekong River is delivered near the mouths of the Mekong River branches which is mostly coinciding with the southwest (SW) monsoon. This sediment budget in turn will be southwestwardly transported along the coast of the Mekong Delta (MD) during the northeast (NE) monsoon. Analysis of monsoonal changes in grain-size distribution (GSD) of surface sediment contributes to a better understanding of erosion and deposition processes along the MD. This study aims to figure out changes in GSD and sediment textures along the MD between SW and NE monsoons based on 183 surficial sediment samples collected along the MD during two field surveys carried-out in October 2016 and February-March 2017. Compared to the GSD during the SW and NE monsoon, the GSD along the MD changed significantly, especially in the estuary areas and along the coast of Bac Lieu and Ganh Hao. Whereas, in the west coast of the MD, GSD seem no changes between the two seasons. These changes in seabed sediment suggest that sediment with grain-sizes ranging from silt to fine sand can be transported during only a NE season.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
• /
• 2005.09b
• /
• pp.985-986
• /
• 2005

• Korea Trade Review
• /
• v.44 no.6
• /
• pp.247-265
• /
• 2019

This research focuses on the influences of FDI on the economic growth of four countries by Mekong river: Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. At the same time, the study also analyzes the contributing of economic growth to attract FDI inflow to these countries. The panel data during the period 1998-2017 were collected from World Bank. Empirical analysis figures out that GDP, mobile phone, labor force are the determinants affecting positive to FDI and vice versa exchange rate, wage are the negative factors. Secondly, FDI, export, exchange rate, government expenditure impact positively on economic growth but inflation and population have negative effect on the economic development. Thirdly, The FDI and economic growth have impact mutually in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand economy. FDI plays a very crucial role in contributing greatly to the economic development of the Mekong sub-region. The economic growth is higher, the FDI inflow is more attractive. From the results, some practical suggestions are offered to enhance the competitiveness in attracting FDI.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
• /
• v.51 no.6
• /
• pp.503-514
• /
• 2018

In recent, the hydrological regime of the Mekong river is changing drastically due to climate change and haphazard watershed development including dam construction. Information of hydrologic feature like streamflow of the Mekong river are required for water disaster prevention and sustainable water resources development in the river sharing countries. In this study, runoff simulations at the Kratie station of the lower Mekong river are performed using SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool), a physics-based hydrologic model, and LSTM (Long Short-Term Memory), a data-driven deep learning algorithm. The SWAT model was set up based on globally-available database (topography: HydroSHED, landuse: GLCF-MODIS, soil: FAO-Soil map, rainfall: APHRODITE, etc) and then simulated daily discharge from 2003 to 2007. The LSTM was built using deep learning open-source library TensorFlow and the deep-layer neural networks of the LSTM were trained based merely on daily water level data of 10 upper stations of the Kratie during two periods: 2000~2002 and 2008~2014. Then, LSTM simulated daily discharge for 2003~2007 as in SWAT model. The simulation results show that Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE) of each model were calculated at 0.9(SWAT) and 0.99(LSTM), respectively. In order to simply simulate hydrological time series of ungauged large watersheds, data-driven model like the LSTM method is more applicable than the physics-based hydrological model having complexity due to various database pressure because it is able to memorize the preceding time series sequences and reflect them to prediction.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
• /
• v.9 no.2
• /
• pp.209-215
• /
• 2022

This study aims to analyze the livelihood resources and income diversification of informal recyclers in the Mekong River Delta (MRD). The multiple linear regression model was applied to determine income diversification and total household income with the sustainable livelihood analysis framework developed by the United Kingdom Department for International Development (2000), including human resources, physical resources, natural resources, financial resources, and social resources. The results indicated that up to 25% of itinerant waste buyers worked on average more than 7.3 hours/day, which was higher than the urban near-poor level regulated by the Vietnam government. The results of the regression model revealed that total households' income was affected by the factors of health status, gender, urban location type 1, the amount of potential savings, and informal credit participation, while the factors of health status, urban location, the amount of potential savings, and informal credit participation have the effect of diversifying farm household income. Thus, if the informal waste recycling sector is supported and regulated by proper government management, it will not only help poor households diversify their income, but it will also help poor households diversify their income, particularly women's income, which is vulnerable and lower than male income in the MRD.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
• /
• v.7 no.5
• /
• pp.291-304
• /
• 2020

This paper examines the factors that drive temporal income diversification in rural areas of the Mekong River Delta in Vietnam, based on a framework that conceptualized diversification as a function of a household's capacity to diversify and incentives (both push and pull factors) to diversify. Drawing from five rounds of the Vietnam Living Standard Measurement Surveys covering a 13-year span (1993-2006), two panel datasets made from five cross-sectional samples are used for the analyses. The data are drawn from the Vietnam General Statistics Office. Both tobit model and Ordinary Least Squares model with random and fixed effects are applied. The main points emerging from the analysis is that income diversification is strongly influenced by household labor capacity. The relationship between household labor capacity and increasing insertion in non-farming wage activities is not driven by unobserved time-invariant factors such as household ability and motivation, but is instead driven by the higher labor capacity of households. In terms of the other household capacity variables, the effect of farm size is much larger in terms of retaining households in traditional occupations as compared to pushing them towards non-farm wage employment. Other variables such as household access to financial capital do not play an important role.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
• /
• v.7 no.2
• /
• pp.309-316
• /
• 2020

This study aims to measure the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and affective commitment (ACO), normative commitment (NCO), and organizational performance in food processing enterprises (FPEs) in the Mekong River Delta, Vietnam. To test the initial model proposed in this paper, a total of 422 owners, directors and managers of FPEs were interviewed from some provinces in the Mekong River Delta. The method of exploratory factor analysis (EFA) is initially employed, then confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structure equation modelling (SEM) are used. The results of SEM showed that higher affective commitment was correlated with normative commitment. The results showed that four aspects of CSR toward employees, customers, environment and legal are significant factors. As a result, ACO and NCO act as mediators between CSR and organizational performance. This finding provides strong evidence of the important role of CSR to support positive impacts on ACO, NCO, and orgazational performance (OP). In addition, the success of the organizational performance is also found by contributions of CSR and NCO to its changes. Although ACO does not directly affect performance, it has a positive effect on the NCO. Therefore, it is necessary to enhance the implementation of CSR to promote implementation of organizational commitments.