News

Mott MacDonald has been appointed by the World Bank to provide consultancy services to assist the Government of Lao PDR and the Royal Thai Government in developing policy tools for adapting to climate change impacts on water and natural resources in the Mekong River Basin.

Mott MacDonald’s team of water and environment experts will develop a pilot Hydrologic-Agricultural-Economic (HAE) model for each country. This will in effect be a hydrological model of the river systems integrated with agricultural and economic models to enable assessment of climate change impacts, and to assist in identifying and evaluating adaptation strategies. The models will help assess hydrologic, water use, agricultural production as well as socio-economic conditions. The team will also help to build local knowledge and skills so that the models can be used locally to help reduce the vulnerability of the local population and sustain their livelihoods through preventative measures.

Krieattisak Sriaram, Mott MacDonald’s project manager said, “We are delighted to be involved in this groundbreaking and much needed climate change impact assessment and management programme. The HAE model will comprise a number of proprietary software packages and data sets will have various bespoke interface programs to enable data transfer between the component models.”

The pilot is due for completion towards the end of 2011.

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