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EU-funded project for Transboundary River Management for the Kura River starts new phase

17 February 2012 10:59 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Victoria Dementyeva - APA-Economics. The EU-funded project for Transboundary River Management for the Kura River started its third phase in January and will be implemented over a period of 12 months. Building on the results of the successful EU Kura Phase II project completed in December 2011, the project, which will benefit Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan, aims at improving water quality in the Kura River basin through trans-boundary cooperation and the development a common approach to water quality monitoring and assessment.

The river basin management approach is based on the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) methodologies, and is geared towards enhancing the technical capacities of environmental authorities and monitoring establishments to enable them to change their policies and practices in accordance with WFD.

The project is built around 4 main components. Under the first component, an analysis of the existing systems for water quality assessment will be undertaken in the project countries against the requirements of EU WFD, and a common approach to water quality assessment developed on the basis of existing data and EU WFD methodology.

Under the second component, a proposal for the replacement of outdated policies and technical instructions will be formulated, and a set of technical guidelines produced to facilitate the adoption of the common approach to water quality assessment. Quality control and quality assurance training in national laboratories and independent inter-laboratory tests is also due to take place.

The third component will mainly focus on the implementation of field surveys in trans-boundary pilot basins, water sampling and analysis, while the fourth will help improve coordination with EU Water Initiative activities and water projects in the South Caucasus region implemented by the EU and other international agencies. Public information material is also expected to be produced.