Author(s)

M. Vardanyan, T. Lennaerts, A. Schultz, L. Harutyunyan & V. Tonoyan

Abstract

The Republic of Armenia has made good progress in the transition from a centrally planned to a market economy. The many state organizations that were previously involved in providing water management services in the drinking water, hydropower and irrigation sectors have been consolidated into autonomous and accountable private, public or cooperative organizations, supported by an improving legal framework and an emerging regulatory capacity. This process has already led to improvements in operational performance. To activate overall water resources management, the Water Resources Management Agency (WRMA) and its five River Basin Management Organizations (BMOs) were recently established under the Ministry of Nature Protection (MNP), which has a broad natural resources mandate. In this paper, it is argued that the current single biggest challenge of the MNP is to revitalize water resources monitoring, water use permitting and enforcement, which will be essential for future basin planning and management. This will require that the MNP streamline cooperation among its various monitoring and enforcement agencies and the WRMA/BMOs. At the same time, financial mechanisms need to be designed to finance these basic water resources management needs, so that they are sustainable. These priority measures are now being developed in the first National Water Program (NWP). Keywords: Armenia, water resources management, water management agencies, legal and institutional reform, national water program.

Keywords

Armenia, water resources management, water management agencies, legal and institutional reform, national water program.