Harmonizing Water Quality Monitoring in the South Caucasus
The USAID South Caucasus Water Program is facilitating the harmonization of water-quantity and water-quality monitoring capabilities among Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia.
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| Biomonitoring provides people with “the possibility to get the real picture of river pollution,” said workshop participant Dr. Susanna Hakobyan, a senior research fellow at Armenia’s Institute of Hydroecology and Ichthyology of the National Academy of Sciences |
The past two decades have been economically and politically tumultuous for the South Caucasus. As the region embarks on recovery, USAID has helped each country rebuild water monitoring networks and the regional cooperation essential for successful transboundary water management.
After surveying monitoring equipment, stations and analysis methods, the South Caucasus Water Program has helped government counterparts identify obstacles and propose solutions to successful data collection and sharing for the Kura River Basin. The program recently brought together senior government representatives for a three-day workshop in Tbilisi, Georgia, to collectively discuss the pros and cons of each country’s draft proposals. These group discussions, coupled with informative presentations on the state of the art in river gauging equipment, prompted participants to reformulate and optimize their original proposals.
“This workshop will help us get more accurate water quality data for transboundary rivers,” said Matanat Avazova of Azerbaijan’s National Monitoring Department.
Building on their momentum, participants created a statement of intent pledging support for data-sharing and joint water-monitoring activities in the South Caucasus. In addition to learning from each other, workshop participants also had the chance to learn a cost-effective water-quality analysis method fairly new to the South Caucasus, biomonitoring. Through hands-on training along the Kura River Banks and in the laboratory, participants discovered that examining the quantity and variation of naturally occurring species in the river is a good indicator of the river’s ecological health. Government stakeholders now recognize the need for developing biological indicators to enhance water monitoring.
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