Cambodia : Pilot Project for Stung Sen River Basin

This project, coordinated by IOWater and funded by the Loire-Brittany and Rhine-Meuse Water Agencies, aims to improve water governance through the promotion of Integrated Water Resour - ces Management (IWRM) in the Stung Sen River Basin, main tributary of the Tonle Sap Lake.

 

The first 2-year implementation phase gave encouraging results and enabled the Cambodian Administration, including the Tonle Sap Authority (TSA) and the Ministry of Water Resources and Meteorology (MOWRAM), to make great progress in the implementation of river basin management.

The work done during the first two years has indeed focused on the initial stages of the planning process (assessment, characterization of the basin, definition of the challenges and objectives for the basin) and on the elements necessary for the initiation of a participatory process (study of the framework for the establishment of a sub-basin committee for the Stung Sen, the first meetings of this Committee and the training of its members).

 

Many field missions have also been made to move forward on the step of basin characterization, although a lot of data were non-existent, especially regarding the use of water resources and their quality.

 

Late 2014, the Stung Sen sub-basin committee met for the second time to validate the characterization of the pilot basin and the launching of a new phase of the project for another two years.

 

The work will focus on the following steps of the planning process, including the establishment of the Program of Measures and Management Plan for the Stung Sen River Basin, as well as their estimated costs.

 

As the first step allowed collecting a large number of data sets and identifying the data sources regularly updated by the partners services, the TSA now whishes to develop its internal capacity to manage and make the best use of these data to produce summary information needed for decision-making and public information through a true Water Information System. The MOWRAM has an ambitious investment policy for the installation of new monitoring stations.

 

A study tour was also organized in France in September with the Loire-Brittany Water Agency (AELB) for three TSA executives in order to present to the Cambodian the functioning of the French Water Agencies and the role of the Basin users.