FAO and NACA convened a stakeholder consultation in Bangkok 25-27 March 2015 to discuss development of an environmental monitoring system for the lower Mekong Basin. The objective of the system is to strengthen the resilience of fisheries and aquaculture and to improve early warning for fishers and farmers.

The workshop was preceded by baseline assessments of existing environmental monitoring and early warning systems relevant to fisheries and aquaculture in the target area, which covers Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. The assessments also reached out to relevant agencies in the target countries to gather feedback on what environmental issues they considered important and what parameters should be monitored to meet these ends. While the main goal of the system is to serve the daily needs of farmers and fishers – providing information and warnings important to their livelihoods - a secondary objective is to facilitate long-term monitoring of the impacts of climate change over the long term.

The state of environmental monitoring was observed to vary between countries. Some such as Thailand, for example, have very good monitoring systems in place for meteorological and water management. Vietnam’s meteorological bureau monitors also river levels and publishes flow and height forecasts. Cambodia has strong programmes to monitor water quality and biodiversity aspects, such as surveys of fish larvae and fish diversity and abundance in deep pools. However, these diverse systems are owned and operated by a raft of different agencies, as they have been developed to serve different purposes, and are not necessarily connected or sharing data. The workshop identified a need to try and integrate the available data produced by existing sources and to build on it, where required, to provide a unified environmental monitoring system capable of sharing data and reporting over different geographic scales, from the wider basin level (ie. between countries) to the local-level advisories of interest to farmers and fishers.

Another crucial issue is connecting the reports generated by the system to fishers and farmers using appropriate communication channels, to ensure that they actually receive the kind of information they need in a timely manner and can benefit from it. As accessibility to different forms of media, language and literacy skills are all substantial issues for often remote communities, communication channels must be chosen very carefully, and in line with the access, skills and convenience of fishers and farmers.

The consultation spent some time discussing recent technological developments. The dramatic increase in the penetration of mobile phones (especially smart phones) and coverage of mobile networks offers a way to directly deliver area-specific information services to farmers and fishers as well as the opportunity to involve them in data collection through custom applications. The ‘internet of things’ also offers new opportunities for low-cost data gathering. Cheap programmable micro-controllers - essentially the tiny computer you might find operating a hotel door lock - are now widely available even as hobbyist kits, excellent documentation and can be fitted with a surprisingly wide array of off the shelf environmental sensors to monitor anything from light, temperature and humidity to gas and radiation levels.

The findings of the consultation will be used to develop a pilot project, to be implemented on a regional basis. Due to the nature of the project, implementation is expected to proceed over an extended, ongoing basis.