Food security, flood pulses and fisheries: transnational common-pool resource management in the Mekong Basin

Abstract

This paper argues that the current policies and institutional structure at local, national and

transnational levels in the Mekong Basin could be detrimental to the already concerning

food security in the region, through their expected negative impacts on widely used

fisheries. The management of the Mekong River is extremely complex, given its nature as

an International Common-Pool Resource, and this is observable through appealing to

appropriate theory on collective action. Yet despite this complexity, overfishing at the local

scale is currently manageable- although this could cease to be the case if national and

transnational institutional plans towards the proliferation of hydrological development

continue at their current rate. National governments are in danger of leaning towards

outdated, ineffective models of state development which rely too exclusively on economic

growth- and are thus too often incentivised to build dams despite their expected negative

impacts fish migration, to the detriment of food security. Transnationally, cooperation

within the Mekong River Commission is currently poor, which cannot hope to be effective

whilst China and its cascade of mainstream dams fail to be involved. The alteration of the

Mekong's flood pulse by upstream states' dams could have significant effects for the lower

Mekong Basin's fisheries, highlighting the interlinking and compounding concerns which

policy in the region faces. Without integrated efforts towards nested enterprises of

governance, food security could likely become seriously threatened.

Keywords: Common-pool resources, collective action problems, governance, Mekong,

Mekong River Commission, food security, fisheries, flood pulse, hydrological development