1) March – December: Mekong River Village Project
With over 4900 km, the Mekong River is the longest river in South East Asia. With its origin in China, it runs through Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, flowing into the South China Sea in Vietnam. The river used to be a major source of food from natural resources, mainly fishing and other aquatic organisms for the population in the Mekong River Basin, some 100 million people. However, during the past decades, the environment of the Mekong River has been significantly altered, primarily because of the construction of numerous hydropower electric dams, producing so-called green energy. As a trans-boundary natural resource, it has a high potential for negative cross-country externalities. For example, controlling the upper part of the River and having the highest number of hydropower plants, decision making in China, to a large degree determines water levels and other environmental conditions such as sediment flows and fisheries, downstream. Currently, the economic benefits generated by the river are with the industrial sector and the urban population who can enjoy affordable hydropower electricity. On the other hand, the rural and fishing villages, located at the river, are penalized by the degradation of their formerly rich natural resources, especially fish but also agricultural land and forest.
Against this background, the Mekong River Village Project, has been started in March 2023 with research partners from all the six Mekong countries. The project is coordinated by Prof. Hermann Waibel.
A major objective of the project is to assess the impacts of development in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) including China, on rural villages, located at the River. To achieve this goal, we have sampled a total of 109 villages, applying a GPS-based sampling method with an equal point-to-point river distance of about 25 km, starting from Southern China until the mouth of the Mekong, in the South China Sea in Vietnam. Hence, we cover a total of some 2700 km or 55% of the river or all of the river outside of China. A tablet-based, topical questionnaire was administered with the heads and other knowledgeable people in the Mekong villages, taking three points in time: now, 10 years ago and 20 years ago. The survey was completed on December 6, 2023. The survey data will be complemented by satellite data of these villages on settlements, vegetation and hydrology. Other topics of the study are for example, the economics of sand extraction from the Mekong, plastic pollution at the river, and loss of food from river resources such as edible river weeds.
A scientific conference financed by the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) is planned for the first half of 2024, to take place in one of the Mekong countries. Furthermore, a monograph will be prepared during the course of 2024 and scientific papers will be published on specific topics. In addition, a documentary film will be produced based on the vast video and photo material collected during the village surveys.
- see Photo 1: “water buffaloes on the way to take a bath in the river, near Luang Prabang, Laos”
- see Photo 2: “Plastic pollution at the mouth of the Mekong River, near Ben Tre in Vietnam”
2) June 2023: Research Conference in Bandung, Indonesia on the Future of Asian Agriculture
A three-days research conference was organized by Dr. Ernah, assistant professor at UNPAD and LUH Alumni 2016, together with Prof. Waibel, LUH from 19 – 21 June at the Giri Gahana Resort in Bandung, Indonesia. The topic of the conference was “Asian Agriculture in a climate-change driven and increasingly risky World”. The conference brought together scholars and scientists from Universities and Research Organizations in Asia, namely, China, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam as well as from Germany and Canada. All participants had worked on topics related to development in Asia including agriculture. The conference was well received by the partner University in Indonesia. High quality papers were presented which led to stimulating and thought-provoking discussions.
The conference papers form the basis for a book to be published in 2024 by CAB International (CABI). CABI is a widely recognized publishing house located in the UK, specialized in international agriculture and development. The monograph will be edited by Hermann Waibel (LUH), Sabine Liebenehm (University of Saskatchewan) and Ernah (UNPAD). The book outline has been approved for publication by the CABI editorial board.
3) Verification of Satellite Data in Rice Production in Thailand
Data on crop production are essential ingredients in rural household surveys in developing countries. However, field size and yield data based on farmer subjective assessments are often inaccurate due to estimation biases of the respondents. With the advancements of satellite data, the possibility of getting more accurate crop production data has emerged. Plots can be identified and exactly measured by GPS and yield growth parameters from satellite data bases can be used in principle for the prediction of yields. However, this requires verification in the field by identifying plots on the ground and by physically measuring harvest.
A yield measurement project has been initially implemented as a TVSEP add-on project (see https://www.tvsep.de/en/research/add-on-projects/collecting-rice-production-data) supervised by Prof. Dr. Hermann Waibel in cooperation with Prof. Dr. Eric Strobl, University of Bern, Switzerland, Assistant Prof. Dr. Prof. Sabine Liebenehm, University of Saskatchewan, Canada, MSc Niels R. Wendt, Leibniz University Hannover, Germany and Assistant Professor Noppon Tantisirin, Ubon Ratchathani University, Thailand.
Over 200 rice plots of TVSEP panel farmers in the provinces of Ubon Ratchathani and Nakhon Phanom were monitored in November 2022. First results were presented at the 11th ASAE conference, in March 2023 in Tokyo, Japan.
In October and November 2023, monitoring of the same rice plots was repeated. Field supervision was carried out by Prof. Hermann Waibel in cooperation with Assistant Prof. Nopporn Tantisirin from Ubon Ratchathani University, Thailand.
With the second round of monitoring, the project has generated a truly unique panel of joint remote sensing and field measurement data. Until to date, similar projects by the World Bank, for example, had only one round of monitoring. Our panel data, however, can facilitate the testing of the predictive power of yield models using satellite data. Furthermore, the data greatly enhance the the options for the analysis of data from the TVSEP panel running from 2007 to 2022.
It is expected that publications in high class development journals will be ready during the course of 2024.
