This thesis aims to improve the socio-economic resilience of the riverine communities in the Lower Mekong Basin (LMB), Cambodia, through enhancing the institutional development of aspects of advantages and risks, factors of unsustainable livelihoods, engagement of external and local institutions, and external dependency. Three hypotheses are tested: (1) livelihoods are highly influenced by assets, poverty, food insecurity, hazards and local trans-boundary influences; (2) existing external and local institutions have failed to improve adaptation and resilience; and, (3) development programmes are ineffective due to insufficient funding by the central government and the short-term policies of Non-governmental Organization (NGOs). This research hinges on dependency theory, concepts of adaptation and resilience, and a sustainable livelihood framework. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were employed as the main research methods. The Upper, Middle, and Lower stretches of the Mekong River were selected as case studies. The research discovered four main findings: (1) livelihoods in the LMB have proven unsustainable in the periods 2001-10 and 2011-20, with high rates of poverty and food insecurity due to heterogeneous growth; lack of rural diversification; insufficient assets; inappropriate strategies; and the impacts of environmental and socio-economic change; (2) neither external nor local institutions were able to reify the capacity of the villagers to adapt to shock and stress resulting from floods, drought, and high food prices: nor could they improve resilience to declines in water-related resources, i.e., water, fisheries and forestry; (3) external institutional support for sustainable livelihood development has proven ineffective due to insufficient government funds,high aid dependency and fragmentation, incoherence of development agendas, and unclear Decentralization & Deconcentration (D&D) mechanisms; and, (4) as the main local institutions, Commune Councils (CoCs) have been weakly established with inadequate human and financial resources; poor private partnerships; limited authority in decision-making, and high dependency on external support. Hypothesis 1 is partially rejected but hypotheses 2 and 3 are proven. The research has also contributed to the extant academic literature, namely in the areas of sustainable livelihoods frameworks, and concepts of adaption and resilience. In the interests of realising socio-economic resilience of the riverine communities in the LMB, the future efforts of governments, international donors, NGOs and CoCs should be directed towards: (1) alleviating poverty and food insecurity; (2) strengthening the capacity of adaption and resilience; and, (3) reducing external dependency. In particular, external institutions should fully support CoCs and the communities with long-term capacity building through on-job training, agricultural extension services, and private sector participation.

This study focuses on the design of water resources systems in developing nations with particular reference to the development of water resources in the Lower Mekong Basin (Khmer Republic, Laos, Thailand, and Republic of South Viet -Nam). The determination of the "best" system in terms of social goals reflecting the economic and social environment of the Mekong countries is the main issue of this dissertation. The imperfection of the usual technique for planning water resources systems, namely, cost -benefit analysis, leads to the use of the standardized cost -effectiveness methodology. To illustrate how the design is accomplished, two distinctly different structural alternatives of possible development in the Lower Mekong Basin are defined. The design process starts from the statements of goals or objectives of water resources development, which are then mapped onto specifications sets in which social needs are represented. Next, the capabilities of alternative systems are determined through simulation in which three 50 -year sequences of synthetic streamflow are generated by a first order autoregressive scheme. The two alternatives are then compared using both quantitative and qualitative criteria. To illustrate how a decision in selecting an alternative system could be reached, ranking of criteria by order of preference is demonstrated. With the choice of either a fixed -cost or fixed- effectiveness approach, the decision to select the best alternative system could be made. At this point, the use of a weighting technique, which is a common fallacy of systems analysis, will be automatically eliminated. The study emphasizes that a systematic design procedure of water resources systems is provided by the standardized cost- effectiveness approach, which possesses several advantages. The approach will suggest and help identify the system closest to meeting the desired economic and social goals of the developing countries in the Lower Mekong Basin. In this connection, the approach will help governments in the preparation of programming and budgeting of capital for further investigations and investments. It is believed that the approach will eliminate unnecessary expenses in projects that are planned on an individual basis or by methods used at present. Further, the approach provides an appropriate mechanism for generating essential information in the decision process. Both quantifiable and non -quantifiable criteria are fully considered. The choice of a fixed -cost or fixed -effectiveness approach will determine the trade -off between these criteria. The study recognizes that research to determine appropriate hydrologic models for monthly streamfiow generation for tributary projects in the Basin is necessary. This leads to another important area of research which is to find the appropriate number of monthly sequences of streamflow to be generated in relation to number of states and decision variables. Research on the design of computer experiments is necessary to improve simulation as a tool to estimate the quantitative effects of a given project.

Thesis (Ph. D. - Hydrology and Water Resources)--University of Arizona. / Includes bibliographical references.

This study focuses on the design of water resources systems in developing nations with particular reference to the development of water resources in the Lower Mekong Basin (Khmer Republic, Laos, Thailand, and Republic of South Viet-Nam). The determination of the "best" system in terms of social goals reflecting the economic and social environment of the Mekong countries is the main issue of this dissertation. The imperfection of the usual technique for planning water resources systems, namely, cost-benefit analysis, leads to the use of the standardized cost-effectiveness methodology. To illustrate how the design is accomplished, two distinctly different structural alternatives of possible development in the Lower Mekong Basin are defined. The design process starts from the statements of goals or objectives of water resources development, which are then mapped onto specifications sets in which social needs are represented. Next, the capabilities of alternative systems are determined through simulation in which three 50-year sequences of synthetic streamflow are generated by a first order autoregressive scheme. The two alternatives are then compared using both quantitative and qualitative criteria. To illustrate how a decision in selecting an alternative system could be reached, ranking of criteria by order of preference is demonstrated. With the choice of either a fixed-cost or fixed-effectiveness approach, the decision to select the best alternative system could be made. At this point, the use of a weighting technique, which is a common fallacy of systems analysis, will be automatically eliminated. The study emphasizes that a systematic design procedure of water resources systems is provided by the standardized cost-effectiveness approach, which possesses several advantages. The approach will suggest and help identify the system closest to meeting the desired economic and social goals of the developing countries in the Lower Mekong Basin. In this connection, the approach will help governments in the preparation of programming and budgeting of capital for further investigations and investments. It is believed that the approach will eliminate unnecessary expenses in projects that are planned on an individual basis or by methods used at present. Further, the approach provides an appropriate mechanism for generating essential information in the decision process. Both quantifiable and non-quantifiable criteria are fully considered. The choice of a fixed-cost or fixed-effectiveness approach will determine the trade-off between these criteria. The study recognizes that research to determine appropriate hydrologic models for monthly streamflow generation for tributary projects in the Basin is necessary. This leads to another important area of research which is to find the appropriate number of monthly sequences of streamflow to be generated in relation to number of states and decision variables. Research on the design of computer experiments is necessary to improve simulation as a tool to estimate the quantitative effects of a given project.

River basins provide essential services for both humans and ecosystems. Understanding the connections between ecosystems and society and their function has been at the heart of resilience studies and has become an increasing important endeavor in research and practice. In this dissertation, I define basin resilience as a river basin system's capacity to absorb, manage, and adapt to biophysical, social-economic, and political changes (or stressors) while still maintaining its essential structure, feedbacks, and functional integrity. I address the question of resilience, scale, and development in the Mekong and Columbia River Basins. This dissertation answers the following questions: 1) is systems theory an appropriate model to evaluate basin resilience, 2) is the Mekong Basin resilient, 3) are the Mekong and Columbia River Basins resilient across multiple scales, 4) can conflict management and collaborative learning enhance resilience, 5) can a resilience framework be used for basin comparisons, and 6) what lessons can the Mekong basin take from rapid development in the Columbia basin? In Chapter 2, I create and apply a social-ecological systems (SES) model of the Mekong River Basin to assess resilience at sub-basin (provincial), watershed (national), and basin (regional) scales. Feedbacks, thresholds, vulnerability, and adaptive capacity are determined and used as inputs into an overall basin resilience assessment. Drawing upon field work done in the Mekong Basin, Chapter 3 uses Conflict Management and Collaborative Learning processes to address resilience weaknesses across multiple scales in the Mekong Basin. Chapter 4 uses the basin resilience framework to compare the Mekong and Columbia Basins against physical characteristics, development rate, conflict and cooperation, and institutional responses to development projects. In this dissertation I find the Mekong has medium-low basin resilience and that scale is a critical determinant in basin resilience assessments. I find that in this study, vulnerability is inversely proportional to resilience, and low resilience at one scale, for example fisheries in the Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia, decreases resilience for the entire basin. I find that Cambodia and Lao PDR are the least resilience and Thailand the most resilient countries in the Mekong Basin ��� Thailand more resilient in some sectors than the Mekong River Commission (MRC). I find that the MRC's conflict management strategy is hampered by a restrictive mandate and weakness in capacity building at tributary and national scales but that Collaborative Learning processes are effective in enhancing resilience at the sub-basin scale. Finally, I demonstrate through the basin comparison that the Mekong has a highly resilient biophysical system and traditionally a resilient institutional system however, the proposed rate of development is unsustainable with trends indicating a significant erosion of resilience. I find the Columbia Basin lacking resilience in fishing, hydropower, and water quality ��� sectors mitigating the effects of development in the Columbia Basin, manifesting as overall negative trends in cooperation. However, the Columbia shows signs of increasing cooperation due recent inclusion of Tribal Nations in water management. Flexible and inclusive institutional responses to water resource development challenges, in the Mekong to rapid development on the mainstream and in the Columbia to negotiations over renewal of the Columbia River Treaty, are key determinants to whether or not each basin can halt the current negative trends and strengthen basin resilience to face the challenges now and those coming in the future. / Graduation date: 2013

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Stanford University, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 349-357).