Stakeholder Advisory Group meeting of the USAID Armenia Improved Water Management Program

On April 12 the regular meeting of the Stakeholder Advisory Group of the USAID Armenia Improved Water Management Program took place. The meeting was dedicated to information systems of water sector, collection, classification and analysis of water cadaster data, monitoring, accounting and control of water resources, as well as a number of related issues, which were reported in the legal gaps analysis of water sector carried out within the framework of the Program. Gayane Gabrielyan, Deputy Minister of Environment, Karen Daghbashyan, Deputy Chairman of the RA Water Committee, as well as other competent representative from partner state institutions participated in the discussion. Deputy Minister Gabrielyan welcomed the efforts of the project aimed at reforms improving the water resources management in Armenia, emphasizing that such discussions always help all the stakeholders supporting the Program to clarify professional approaches to the issues at question and to find common edges of cooperation to correctly address the raised issues and join efforts to find solutions. The local expert Mikayel Nahapetyan drew the participants’ attention to a number of issues, including the problems which need to be solved by the government by using the water sector information, what methods can be used to collect, process, analyze, summarize, reproduce that range of information, what data this information consists of, what kind of format should be used to be accurate/reliable, comparable and compatible, etc. During the discussion the participants shared their views and proposed possible solutions, which were recorded and will be taken into account by the Program in the final draft of the legal gap analysis and the proposed roadmap.