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Invisible water in the Bolivian Amazon

By IW:LEARN

February 22^nd, 2024

For the inhabitants of Sacaba and Santa Cruz de la Sierra, in the Bolivian Amazon, the challenge of water is not new. Although they are located in the basin of the Madeira River, one of the main tributaries of the Amazon River, the available water resources come mainly from invisible sources: the aquifers beneath the two urban centers.

Understanding and visualizing the water cycle, when water comes from an invisible source, plays a crucial role in understanding its value and committing to sustainable use and conservation of a precious resource. 132 town children in Sacaba had this opportunity: they gathered in the San Jacinto Educational Unit and immersed themselves in the water cycle. They explored how water moves between lakes, rivers, the atmosphere, oceans and land, and how it transforms from invisible to visible. This activity, powered by the Amazon Basin SAP Implementation Project, aimed to promote water care among children and adults. The project established networks to monitor the quantity and quality of groundwater in two important urban aquifers in Bolivia, one in the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra and the other in Sacaba. Understanding the critical importance of water in sustaining life and ecosystems creates awareness of how precious this resource is, while it is threatened to become scarce due to overuse, pollution, environmental degradation, and climate change.

In December 2023, the monitoring equipment began operating with the intention of providing data on the quantity and quality of the groundwater. This aquifer supplies a population of almost 1.5 million people in Santa Cruz de la Sierra and approximately 172,000 people in Sacaba.

The eight member countries of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) agreed in 2017 to implement the Strategic Action Program (SAP) to strengthen Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) in the Amazon. One of the strategic actions defined in the SAP is to protect, manage, and monitor aquifers in the Amazon basin. The SAP is currently being implemented in the Amazon countries - Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela - through the Amazon Basin SAP Implementation Project.

Protection, sustainable management, and rational use of groundwater

The data generated by the Santa Cruz de la Sierra and Sacaba monitoring networks will inform decision-makers at national and local levels, making it possible to establish policies for protecting aquifer systems and their proper and sustainable management, identifying signs of overexploitation or possible contamination. Furthermore, this information will help to plan the efficient use of these water resources, design and forecast alternatives to meet the increasing demand for drinking water.

Geophysical study in the vicinity of the Wasterwater Treatment Plant (PTAR) in the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia. Photo: Nayra Chambi.

At the same time, the information gathered from the monitoring networks will be incorporated into Bolivia's Groundwater Information System (SIASBO). At the regional level, these networks will form part of the Regional Groundwater Management Center for Latin America and the Caribbean (CeReGAS) and the Amazon Regional Observatory (ORA) of ACTO, which is a reference center for scientific and technological information on the Amazon. They also provide data for the future regional groundwater monitoring network, which will be designed under the new Amazon Aquifer Systems Project.

The monitoring networks in Santa Cruz de la Sierra and Sacaba have automatic sensors and piezometers in active and inactive wells. One such sensor was installed in the San Jacinto Educational Unit. These devices store data on the quantity and temperature of the water, which are transferred to the information systems via software. For water quality studies, freshwater samples are being collected from wells in production.

Construction of the piezometer at the San Jacinto Educational Unit in Sacaba, Bolivia. Photo: Nayra Chambi.

Following the completion of the monitoring network, the Amazon Basin Project carried out training sessions for SIASBO technicians on the use and management of automatic sensors. Training and technical updates will be ongoing and offered to non-governmental organizations, with the aim of encouraging active participation by society in the management and conservation of water resources.

About the Amazon SAP Implementation Project

Since 2021, the Amazon Basin SAP Implementation Project has been supporting the eight member countries of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) in implementing the Strategic Action Program (SAP) and promoting Integrated Water Resources Management in the Amazon Basin in a source-to-sea continuum. Based on the SAP strategic response lines, the project aims at institutionally strengthening water governance in the eight Amazonian countries and at the regional level, building community resilience and protecting aquatic ecosystems to address climate change, as well as monitoring water resources and ecosystems through a Regional Environmental Monitoring System.

Implemented by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) with financing from the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the project is executed by ACTO.

For more information on the Amazon Basin SAP Implementation Project, please contact the Project Manager, Maria Apostolova (maria.apostolova@otca.org), or the Project Communication Specialist, Nina Rodrigues (nina.rodrigues@otca.org), and visit the project page on iwlearn.net.