Review of technical cooperationin integrated water management in Bolivia two years later

Since 2015, the Bolivian Ministry of Environment and Water (MMAyA) has been a major partner of the French Development Agency (AFD). Several investment and technical cooperation projects have been worked on jointly, such as the project to support integrated water management policies in Bolivia, which aimed to accompany the MMAyA on four main themes: Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) at the national policy level and its implementation at the basin level; wastewater management in the context of IWRM; water information systems; capacity building through exchanges of experience and strategic studies.

The AFD asked the International Office for Water (OiEau) to be the project’s implementing partner because of its extensive experience in supporting French and international public stakeholders in moving towards integrated, sustainable and innovative water management.
As the project comes to an end, it is important to highlight some of the results of this
cooperation and the challenges that remain for the future, on two themes in particular.

First, the project contributed greatly to the reflection on inter-scale articulation and the roles of basin platforms in implementing central level planning tools. While there is sectoral planning at the national level (Plurinational Water Resources Plan) that promotes the elaboration of local planning tools (such as Basin Master Plans), the challenge is their implementation. The role of local stakeholders is key to this, and the big challenge that remains is the legitimisation of the roles of the basin management units and their platforms.

Secondly, the Bolivian partners appreciated that the project has promoted a basin approach and inter-institutional work on sanitation, in order to achieve a global and common vision on the issue. A successful example of this approach was the implementation of a pilot of a local and participatory evaluation of sanitation in the Rocha River basin (Cochabamba), where actors from the central level ( Authority of Fiscalisation and Social Control of Drinking Water and Basic Sanitation – AAPS, Vice-Ministry of Drinking Water and Basic Sanitation – VAPSB, etc.) and local actors (local entities (water and sanitation authorities, etc.) participated.) and local actors (Drinking Water and Sewerage Service Providers – EPSA, River Basin Management Units – UGC, etc.). This pilot can be replicated in other basins thanks to the local evaluation guide that has been developed with the project.