Lancang-Mekong center strengthens cooperation

More than 1,000 officials and experts from Lancang-Mekong countries have taken part in technical exchanges and training activities organized with the support of the Lancang-Mekong Water Resources Cooperation Center over the past decade.

Addressing an event for the 2026 Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Week on Water Resources in Beijing, Wang Hongming, secretary-general of the center, also disclosed that since 2020, the Lancang-Mekong Sweet Spring Project has built a total of 110 water supply demonstration projects across 13 provinces in three Lancang-Mekong countries.

This project has not only provided local communities with "lowcost, high-quality" water supply services, but also offered a viable technical solution to address the drinking water issue in the Lancang-Mekong basin, he stressed.

The Mekong River, known as the Lancang in China, is a vital waterway that stretches across China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the first Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Leaders' Meeting. On March 23, 2016, the Sanya Declaration of the meeting proposed the establishment of the center as a platform for comprehensive cooperation among the six countries in technical exchange, capacity building, drought and flood disaster management, information sharing, and joint research.

The center was then officially established in November 2017.

Over the past decade, the center has organized the first ministerial meeting, four water resources cooperation forums, five regular joint working group meetings and 18 special joint working group meetings, Wang said.

He said the center led the drafting of the Five-Year Action Plan for Lancang-Mekong Water Resources Cooperation (2023-2027) and the Initiative on Deepening Lancang-Mekong Water Resources Cooperation, which were included as key outcome documents of the Fourth LMC Leaders' Meeting and the Ninth LMC Foreign Ministers' Meeting, respectively.

The center has participated in the implementation of 65 water-related pragmatic cooperation projects, covering flood and drought management, information sharing, rural water supply, dam safety, small watershed management, water-saving irrigation and technical standards in the water sector, he said.

These projects have promoted multichannel and multilevel exchanges and cooperation between the official and private sectors of Lancang-Mekong countries, Wang said.

Wang Wei, an official with the Department of International Cooperation, Science and Technology of China's Ministry of Water Resources, said the visits of Li Guoying, minister of water resources, to Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam in 2025 provided high-level impetus to Lancang-Mekong water resources cooperation.

Following the visits, China initiated notifications of typhoon and rainstorm forecasting and early warning information for the Mekong River basin, while the six LMC member countries reached important consensus on the mutual provision of hydrological information, he added.

Chalongkwan Tavarayuth, counselor at the Royal Thai Embassy in China, said that as the Lancang-Mekong basin faces unpredictable rainfall and severe seasonal droughts, water security has become inseparable from regional prosperity.

She said Thailand has consistently accorded high priority to the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation framework, which, over the past decade, has matured beyond a platform for dialogue into an essential mechanism for concrete cooperation.

A cornerstone of that practical cooperation is the LMC Special Fund, she said. Through China's continued contributions, nearly 1,000 localized projects have directly improved people's wellbeing across member states.

In Thailand, projects supported by the fund, including one on urban community resilience against flash floods in trans-boundary rivers, have strengthened local capacity in mitigating climate and environmental risks, she said.

"As we enter the next decade of the LMC, Thailand believes that our cooperation must become even more focused and forward-looking," she said.

houliqiang@chinadaily.com.cn