The MRC is committed to being a comprehensive and high-quality source of data and information on the status and trends in water-related conditions, including social and economic situations across the Mekong River Basin. This commitment aligns with the MRC’s mandated Core River Basin Management Functions (CRBMFs), and notably CRBMF 1: Data acquisition, exchange and monitoring. The Basin Development Strategy 2021-2030 particularly prioritizes the modernization of data and information acquisition, processing and sharing, to strengthen the MRC’s role as a knowledge hub for the Mekong River related resources and conditions.
The MRC Procedures for Data and Information Exchange and Sharing (PDIES) provide overall policy guidance concerning the management and transmission of data between Member Countries and with the MRCS. The socio-economic data housed within the updated Socio-Economic Database also adheres to PDIES Procedure and Guidelines.
A first socio-economic database was launched in 2015 and is available from a searchable platform on the MRC website here for people with a user account registered with the organization. The SE Database (2015) covers a wide-ranging set of indicators, from water resource related livelihoods and economic values to broader social welfare and economic status of the Lower Mekong Basin. Data originates, from national surveys, administrative reports and other sources provided by the Member Countries.
The MRC adopted a comprehensive Mekong River Basin Indicator Framework (MRB-IF) in 2018 comprising five dimensions, including the social and economic dimensions for basin-wide monitoring and impact assessment. The MRC Data Acquisition and Generation Action Plan (DAGAP) to implement the MRB-IF was approved in 2019. Correspondingly, a new and improved version of socio-economic database was developed and finalized in 2023, incorporating consultation with Member Countries to represent the new structure of socio-economic (SE) and gender and vulnerability (G&V) data collected and transmitted by Member Countries officially and systematically in 2023.
The SE and G&V Data within DAGAP collected and transmitted by Member Countries in 2023 comprise secondary data officially sourced from Member Countries covering over 60 monitoring parameters spanning 40 years from 1981 to 2020, at national and provincial spatial scales (Lower Mekong Basin boundary). These data include hundreds of underlying data items, and are aggregated by gender (male/female, boys/girls), urban/rural areas, and key water-related sectors (agriculture, fisheries, forestry, hydropower, navigation, sand-mining and tourism). Therefore, the Socio-Economic Database (2023) will enable users such as the MRCS, Member Countries, and concerned line agencies to access the required data especially, the SE and G&V data items, analyses and maps for use in regional and national planning and decision-making processes in the future.