Posted: 12 Oct, 2010
The environment was not ignored in last summer’s U.S. State Department meeting in Hanoi with the foreign ministers of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam.
With Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leading the U.S. delegation, the five representatives agreed to use the July 2009 Lower Mekong Initiative (LMI) to “highlight the growing cooperation between the United States and the four Lower Mekong countries in three areas of concern—the environment, health, and education and training.” The July 2009 LMI represented a U.S. commitment to contribute to the improvement of these aspects of the Lower Mekong culture and quality of life and to ensure that there is a balance of external influences in a region where China has been increasingly involved.
As part of the meeting, the U.S. committed to spending more than $22 million in 2010 on environmental programs in the Mekong region. Programs supported through the LMI include the following:
- Launch of a 3-year U.S. program to assist the four Lower Mekong countries in developing cooperative strategies to address the impact of climate change on water resources, food security, and livelihood. The United States has identified $3 million for the first year and intends to continue similar levels of funding in the second and third years of the program.
- Reestablishment of a sister-river partnership agreement between the Mekong River Commission and the Mississippi River Commission, which aims to improve the management of transboundary water resources.
- Continued development of Forecast Mekong, a predictive modeling tool to illustrate the impact of climate change and other challenges to the sustainable development of the Mekong River Basin.
- Funding a 2-year research program among universities in the Lower Mekong countries to study persistent organic pollutants in the Mekong River Basin.
The U.S. also pledged more than $147 million in 2010 for health assistance and more than $18 million in 2010 for education and training.
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