IWRM Project to begin soon
14-Jul-2009 10:07 AM

A MEMORANDUM of Understanding was signed yesterday at the Ministry of Primary Industries Headquarters in Suva, between SOPAC and the Government of Fiji for a common aim in the furtherance of sustainable water resources and wastewater management in the country.

Speaking at the signing ceremony, Permanent Secretary for Agriculture, Dr.Richard Beyer said that the Government was grateful to the executing agency SOPAC, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) as the implementing agencies for the Global Environment Facility (GEF) initiative in implementing the Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) project for the Nadi River Basin.

The Ministry’s Land, Water and Resource Management Division is committed to the principles of participatory human development and for Fiji, the IWRM project will be in the Nadi River Basin.

The aim of the project is to improve flood preparedness and integrate land and water resource management planning within the Nadi River Basin using an integrated flood management approach.

“The project which costs around US$500,000 as seed funding for the five year project is a first ever project where we will be able to undertake run-off modeling and flood forecast modeling, apart from establishing a benchmark for river water quality and mangrove health levels,” explained Dr.Beyer.

“Whilst the Government has a number of short term initiatives such as dredging and construction of flood retention dams to address the flooding problems in Nadi, I am confident that the integrated water management demonstration project will be able to put in place long term Flood Management Plan for Nadi,” he added.

Dr Beyer added that lessons learnt will be exchanged with other Pacific Island nations in developing a sound Integrated Flood Risk Management Plan.

Implementation phase of the project are expected to begin by the end of this month.