Denmark provides US$9 million for MRC's Basin Development Plan and Environment Programme

The Mekong River Commission (MRC) and the Government of the Kingdom of Denmark today signed an agreement worth 52.5 million Danish Kroner (around $US9 million) to fund the second phase of the MRC’s Basin Development Plan (BDP2) and to continue the work of the Environment Programme. The new funding agreement was signed by H.E. Mr Peter Lysholt Hansen, Ambassador of Denmark to Viet Nam and Dr Olivier Cogels, Chief Executive Officer MRC Secretariat at the MRC Secretariat headquarters in Vientiane. Under the terms of the grant 45 million Danish Kroner (DKK) will go to the BDP2, while 7.5 million DKK will go to the MRC’s Environment Programme. The grant will extend to 2010. Both the BDP and the Environment Programme are both programmes which were called for in the 1995 Agreement on Cooperation for the Sustainable Development of the Mekong River Basin, which formed the MRC. The BDP2 programme will formulate a joint development rolling plan which takes a basin wide perspective of shared water and related resources and aims to manage and develop them in an integrated, sustainable and equitable manner for the mutual benefit of the MRC’s member countries. In its second phase the BDP will also further develop its established knowledge base and its assessment tools and see these used effectively both within the MRC and the National Mekong Committees (NMCs). It will also build capacity at MRC and NMC levels for integrated water resources management (IWRM) planning.