Mekong - U.S. Partnership
MUSP May-June 2023 Infographic
MUSP-May-June-Infographic-Final-Draft-4Download The Mekong-U.S. Partnership (MUSP) has held a wide range of engaging activities across the Mekong sub-region in May and June. Key events include the Mekong Inspiring Women Entrepreneurs (WE Inspire) Healthcare Workshop, which trained 121 women on self-screening for breast cancer awareness, women’s rights, gender-based violence, and health insurance registration for migrants and stateless…
What We Do at the Sustainable Infrastructure Partnership
To mark World Water Day last year, March 22, 2022, our team in Bangkok produced a video introducing the work of the Sustainable Infrastructure Partnership. To date, there have been more than 3,500 views of the video. Enjoy this look back at the reasons why we do what we do! https://www.youtube.com/embed/j0dIGw03LRI?feature=oembed
Cooperating with the MRC on Groundwater
Countries of the Lower Mekong region are turning to groundwater resources to meet the growing needs for irrigation, industrial use and household drinking water. In the highlands, for example, groundwater resources are pumped to irrigate high-value coffee plants, while in the lowlands, groundwater provides supplementary irrigation for rice growing. Yet groundwater is “invisible” and is…
Mekong Research Symposium Shows Value of Local Partnerships
Civil society partners and local communities brought new dimensions to this year’s Mekong Research Symposium (MRS), which took place in Chiang Rai, Thailand, from 14 – 16 March. They spoke about the value of citizen engagement in deciding what data are useful and who needs the data, why local communities should be involved in collecting…
Strengthening Flood and Drought Forecasting
4,000 training hours, 111 trainees, and 19 government agencies in Lower Mekong countries. Those, in brief, were the numbers highlighted at the wrap-up event for a US-Republic of Korea (ROK) capacity-building project on 4 October 2022. The project, ‘Improved Hydrological and Hydraulic Decision Support for the Mekong Basin,’ took place over a 13-month period from…
Reporting Tour Showcases Mekong Projects
Pact's Mekong Programs staff at the Mekong Community Institute Local communities that depend on the Mekong River for fishing, farming and tourism were front and center of a reporting tour of Thailand’s resource-rich northeast, from 24-25 March. Staff from Pact’s Mekong Programs accompanied Thai journalists and US embassy officials, including some from USAID, on a…
Using Big Data for Decision Making
Advances in data processing and storage technology have made data about rainfall, river flow, forest cover, salinity levels and other environmental parameters freely available to anyone with Internet access and a computer— but making sense of that data remains a challenge. Imagine every government officer needing to scroll through thousands and millions of statistics every…
USACE Visit Boosts Mekong-U.S. Cooperation
The US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) visited several government agencies responsible for water resource management in Thailand, during a visit in December 2021 to explore possible partnership opportunities. The USACE team, accompanied by staff of the Sustainable Infrastructure Partnership (SIP), visited the Royal Irrigation Department (RID) on 15 December 2021 for discussions about areas…
Investigating Sustainable Energy Development Opportunities
Did you know: Thailand used 60 TW of power just to run air conditioning in 2020—but stricter energy efficiency standards could reduce this consumption by 20 to 30 percent? Cambodia's hydropower production was curtailed by the Mekong drought in 2019-2020? Vietnam was a late starter in renewable energy, but feed-in tariffs helped install 9GW of…
Measuring What We Manage
Did you know that the US Government’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) makes its data available online for free? People can also make use of its data tools and data “recipes,” through its online tutorials for accessing and using data. Now, the Sustainable Infrastructure Partnership (SIP) is working with NASA and other government agencies to…
Learning to Manage Groundwater Data in Thailand
A professional cohort of geologists and planners from Thailand’s Department of Groundwater Resources (DGR) has learned new skills for managing groundwater data, through a custom-designed training course led by the US Geological Survey (USGS). Thai farmers and poor household in some of the driest parts of the country rely on groundwater for drinking and irrigation,…
Investigating Energy Alternatives to Hydropower
Once viewed as a clean energy source, the impacts of mainstream hydropower dams on the Mekong are now plain to see. They include fisheries decline, biodiversity loss, waterway transport disruptions, and falling household incomes in riverside communities. In 2020, Cambodia called a 10-year moratorium on building any more hydropower dams domestically. But over the border…
