The Mekong River Basin has always been used for fishing, irrigation and navigation by the riparian people. The first structured exploration of the river basin began with a French Mekong expedition at the end of the 19th century (Wikipedia, 2010). Until the 1950s the Mekong River was described as the "only large river left in the world, besides the Amazon, which remained virtually unexploited."(Nakayama, 2002: pp. 274–275. in Wikipedia, 2010) The decolonization of Indochina by the Geneva Accords in the middle of the 20th century enabled a common water management of the Mekong River Basin by the four riparian countries Vietnam, Lao PDR, Cambodia and Thailand.
The history of International
