BIO-PLATEAUX, a water management project between three countries and two basins

These management issues are shared between the 3 countries, but the administrative borders in fact define geographical limits of competence, and therefore a multiplication of stakeholders involved in management, with legitimately different expectations, priorities, working languages, legal contexts, organisational methods, constraints and resources.

In a step-by-step approach, the BIO-PLATEAUX project aims to help strengthen links and contribute to the decompartmentalisation required for the sustainable management of cross-border rivers.

Rémi Boyer, project manager for integrated water resource management in OiEau's Support - Institutional and Technical Cooperation Department, explains the details of this ambitious project.

My name is Rémi Boyer, and I'm a project manager in integrated water resource management. I work in the Support - Institutional and Technical Cooperation Department at Sophia Antipolis. After various experiences in South-East Asia and Africa, I am currently working on projects in Latin America and the Caribbean.

In particular, I have the opportunity to lead the Bio-Plateaux initiative on the Guyana Shield. This project focuses on the transboundary rivers that French Guiana shares with its neighbours: the Maroni to the west with Suriname, and the Oyapock to the east with Brazil. At the request of the Guiana Water Board, the OiEau team has taken on the role of facilitating and coordinating activities available to partners in the three countries.

The Guiana Shield in general, and the cross-border catchment areas of the Maroni and Oyapock in particular, are characterised by two unique features:

• human, with a remarkable cultural wealth. The Maroni unites a wide variety of cultures: Creoles, Bushinenguans, Amerindians, people of Asian origin, etc. From downstream to upstream, as the river meanders, it abounds in specific features, languages, means of subsistence and different social organisations. These catchment areas are first and foremost living areas.
• ecosystemic, with exceptional biodiversity, for which water resources are a real breeding ground. French Guiana is Europe's gateway to the Amazon. This green and blue treasure raises questions about the instruments available to us to gain a better understanding of it and protect it, in terms of both indicators and resources.

In this particular context, cross-border river basins nevertheless face serious management challenges, which are very real for the people who live there:

• essential services, starting with access to drinking water of sufficient quality and on a continuous basis. In isolated areas, this is a technical, economic and service organisation challenge that must also be adapted to the context and expectations of the local population. Another essential service is solid waste management, with major collection, transport and storage issues for both catchment areas.

• the risk of flooding, with climate change leading to more intense and more frequent extreme events, and a changing seasonal pattern. Because of the history of these rivers, the level of resilience of the populations is relatively high compared with other regions of the world, but vulnerability and exposure to risks is increasing from generation to generation, with demographic growth, sedentarisation and the multiplication of inhabited areas along the river.
• the quality of the environment, with changes in economic activities having an impact on water resources. For example, the use of sediment on riverbanks changes the course of watercourses and their hydromorphology. Another example is illegal gold panning, which has consequences for the daily lives of local residents (turbidity, which directly affects bathing water) and for the health of people exposed to heavy metals through food taken from rivers (fish, for example).

By definition, these management issues are shared, as they are linked to the flow of rivers and upstream-downstream dynamics in catchment areas. However, the Surinamese, Guyanese and Brazilian partners have all noted that the responses within and between the territories are compartmentalised. Although rivers are dynamic points of contact, enabling goods and people to be transported, they are nonetheless borders on maps. These boundaries define the limits of geographical powers, and therefore the number of stakeholders involved in management, with legitimately different expectations, priorities, working languages, legal contexts, organisational methods, constraints and resources.

For all these reasons, there is a real need for dialogue and coordination towards integrated management of water resources and aquatic biodiversity. This implies gradually building cross-border, cross-sector governance between the various uses (drinking water, navigation, environment, agriculture, hydroelectricity, extraction activities, etc.), bringing together all the institutional players (national, regional, local authorities), non-institutional players (economic, non-economic, associations) and populations (customary authorities and users).

Taking a step-by-step approach, the BIO-PLATEAUX project aims to help strengthen the links and help break down the barriers required for the sustainable management of cross-border rivers.

Between 2019 and 2022, the first phase of the project has taken the gamble of anchoring the approach in knowledge, with three objectives:

• to get to know each other better, with the organisation of an international conference in Cayenne that brought together high-level authorities from the three territories in November 2019, in order to formulate a shared political will for dialogue, and to instigate the work dynamic. Thematic cross-border technical groups were then set up, based on the key issues in these catchment areas (risks, environmental quality, essential services). These enabled the organisation of remote exchanges during the COVID period, followed by joint campaigns in the field.
• Improving knowledge of water resources and aquatic biodiversity, by identifying existing data, sharing it and developing it jointly (www.bio-plateaux.org platform, products based on needs such as daily hydrological bulletins), but also by strengthening monitoring networks based on the priorities identified by the partners. For example, the project has facilitated the signing of a Franco-Surinamese cross-border technical cooperation agreement at ministerial level on the Maroni, and the installation of hydrometric stations to improve flood prevention and response.
• raising awareness of the challenges facing cross-border catchment areas, targeting technicians (studies and training on innovative subjects, such as spatial hydrology), the general public (with water classes, based on educational materials produced with associations and partners in the three territories), and decision-makers (with the inclusion of cooperation in the Guiana Water Development and Management Master Plan (SDAGE) 2022-2027 and joint promotion of the challenges facing the Guiana Shield at international events).

After this first phase, which laid the foundations for dialogue between the three countries, the second phase of the project, which will be implemented until 2026, involves working on the establishment of a cross-border observatory on water and aquatic environments, with four complementary approaches:

• governance, which is the basis of the joint work. On the one hand, it involves reflection on the Observatory itself, with shared prefiguration work. This Observatory will be co-constructed by the players in the three territories, and will have to be adapted to the legal and organisational possibilities and to the resources available in order to be sustainable. In addition, the Observatory is part of a pre-existing context of cross-border cooperation and dialogue, and must therefore contribute to and strengthen it;
• local leadership, by initiating a participatory approach so that local people can directly influence the Observatory's pre-configuration and planning work through their knowledge, observations and the formulation of their expectations. The project also provides for local residents to benefit from awareness-raising initiatives, in partnership with local schools and associations;
• basin planning, with the establishment of an ad hoc method that takes into account the regulatory constraints of each country, then its joint, gradual and participative implementation through an inventory, a shared diagnosis and the definition of a common vision for the future of the basin;

• improving knowledge, by sharing thematic experience and producing data that will feed into basin planning, following on from the cross-border technical groups set up during the first phase.

In close coordination with the focal points in each territory (the Guiana Water Office, Anton de Kom University in Suriname, the Secretariat of State for International Relations in Amapa, Brazil), the OiEau team has been identified to lead the cross-border approach. This is an extraordinary opportunity to share and learn from our partners, in a unique and deeply fascinating context.

Expectations and needs are high, and BIO-PLATEAUX is not intended to meet all the challenges in a complex area. But the project does intend to make a contribution to the future of transboundary rivers on the Guiana Shield.