Abstract
Abstract The Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) is a new type of regional cooperation mechanism in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS). It was officially co-founded by six Lancang-Mekong countries in 2016. Water resources cooperation is the flagship field of the LMC. The goal of this article is to introduce comprehensively the LMC and to illustrate why it can be regarded as a new choice for regional water resources cooperation in the GMS. This paper first reviews the background to LMC's foundation, and then introduces the structural framework, operating mechanism and recent advances of the LMC. It will then analyze the deficiencies of the present water resources cooperation mechanisms in the GMS and the comparative advantages of water resources cooperation under LMC. Finally, some suggestions were given to improve and reinforce water resources cooperation under the LMC. This research concludes that the LMC is more suitable for the actual needs and objective reality of Lancang-Mekong countries owing to its high-level and all-round regional cooperation mechanism. It was established jointly by all riparian states, with a shared vision to enhance the well-being of six countries' people, and works to narrow the development gap among regional countries.
Highlights
The Lancang-Mekong River is an important international river in Asia that originated in the Tibetan plateau
These regions are known as the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) and are made up of the People’s Republic of China (PRC, Yunnan Province and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region), the Republic of the Union of Myanmar (Myanmar), the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR), the Kingdom of Cambodia (Cambodia), the Kingdom of Thailand (Thailand) and Socialist Republic of Vietnam (Vietnam) (Krongkaew, 2004; Krongkaew et al, 2005; Cui et al, 2012)
The Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) aims to establish an example of a new type of international relations, where they emphasize the importance of a win–win cooperation
Summary
The Lancang-Mekong River is an important international river in Asia that originated in the Tibetan plateau. To exploit the Mekong River in a way that is more equitable for scientific purposes, Mekong countries and other relative organizations established some regional cooperation mechanisms to enforce cooperation (Weatherbee, 1997; Greg Browder, 2000) These mechanisms achieved some substantial progress in the subregion cooperation at the Lancang-Mekong basin (Jacobs, 2002; Kelly, 2009), especially in trade and economics (Than, 2005), the functioning of these regional organizations is still far from optimal in terms of water cooperation (Keskinen et al, 2008). Based on the practical necessity of the Lancang-Mekong regional cooperation, and the imperfection of the current cooperation mechanism, China has initiated the establishment of the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) Mechanism to further strengthen cooperation in water resources under this framework
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