During recent decades the regional economic development of the four countries of the Lower MekongBasin has evolved at a fast pace which goes in parallel with the upgrading and development of roads. This synthesis report of the Roads and Floods project presents four road development and rehabilitation case studies in Cambodia and Viet Nam aiming to understand the interactions between roads and floods better, as well as to investigate the impacts of the different road development strategies.
The cases clearly show that during the development process of roads in the Mekong floodplains, coordination between the road and transport sector, the water sector, the flood risk management sector, the environment sector, and the social sector is essential. The character of the floodplain system requires not only local impacts to be considered, but also impacts and implications at a larger scale. Furthermore, the results indicate that higher initial investments may lead to lower medium term costs and ecological impacts.
The Best Practice Guidelines are a list of recommendations proposed to take into account in the development and rehabilitation of a road in the Mekong floodplain, some of which are to:
- strengthen the relationship between road development and rehabilitation and environmental assessment
- enhance sustainable financing mechanisms in order to facilitate implementation of integrated road policies/projects
- invest in education, training and technical support to introduce practice of integrated planning and environmental assessments of road development and rehabilitation
- strengthen the system and process of Environmental Impact Assessment, specifically the coverage of floodplain hydraulics and related ecology
- enforce compliance of the updated and reviewed Cambodian and Vietnamese road design standards and guidelines also between the different government bodies within one country
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