Poster: Lessons Learned from Guarani Aquifer System Project to Replicate in the Framework Program of La Plata Basin

KETTELHUT JULIO Water Resources Department - Water Resources and Urban Environment Secretariat - Brazil International Waters, IWRM, Groundwater, Surface and groundwater integrated management, GEF project. "La Plata Basin (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) is one of the largest catchments in South America, -extending over 3.1 million km2- and has enormous economic and social importance for the region. The Intergovernmental Coordinating Committee for the La Plata Basin Countries (CIC, in Spanish) was created by the governments of the five countries who agreed to carry out a joint and integrated study of the area. The agreement was consolidated in 1969 with the signing of the La Plata Basin Treaty, providing a basis for further bilateral and multilateral agreements concerning jurisdictional matters, navigation, fishing, pollution prevention, scientific research, etc. Currently, the CIC has a ’Framework Program for the Sustainable Management of the Water Resources of the la Plata Basin with respect to the Effects of Climate Variability and Change (FP)’. This FP is an ongoing project that is being implemented through a participatory process between the countries, with the support of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), through United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) and the Organization of American States (OAS), between 2010 and 2015. The FP was organized in 15 subcomponents in order to facilitate its implementation. One of them is the Integrated Management of Groundwater, in the framework of IWRM. There are substantial transboundary groundwater aquifers in the region, such as Guarani, Serra Geral, Yrendá Toba Tarijeño , Cauia-Bauru, Pantanal, among others. The Guaraní Aquifer System is the most important groundwater reservoir, due to its extent and volume with an area of approximately 1.2 million km2, in which there are almost 15 million inhabitants. A joint project, supported by GEF until January 2009, expanded and consolidated the knowledge about the aquifer. This paper draws mainly upon lessons learned from the Guaraní Aquifer System (GAS) project, which would be considered into the FP of the La Plata Basin, such as university and civil society involvement through public participation funds, empowerment of local actors on pilot projects implementation, national public institutions involved on project implementation, regulations should not include provisions that weaken or relativize the State sovereign rights, regulations and management are of little use if the resource being managed is unknown."

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