Integrated river basin management in Southeast Asia

The impacts and aftermath of floods affect millions of people worldwide and the poor in particular. In recent years, there has been a worldwide change in approach from flood control to flood management. The former relies mainly on engineering interventions and often achieves only localised protection. In the latter, a more holistic approach is adopted, where the whole river basin is treated as an integrated system. This paper examines three river basins in Southeast Asia where policies generated by the World Bank and Asian Development Bank were applied to determine the critical causes of flooding and the main interfaces with other water sectors.