This change story was originally published in our 2017 annual report.

A long-simmering challenge

Shrinking glaciers, extreme droughts and management challenges threaten Bolivia’s water supply. In the past, these shortages have led to controversy; in 1999, for example, a series of protests that became known as the Cochabamba Water War led the government to reverse the privatisation of the city’s water.

Almost 20 years later, Bolivia continues to face supply issues. In 2016, the country suffered its worst drought in 25 years. The water shortages affected 125 000 families and 283 000 hectares of agriculture, and led to the declaration of a state of emergency. And the very next year, the capital, La Paz, suffered a further historic drought. Drought can be a struggle throughout much of the country, but agricultural communities also face the challenge of maintaining their livelihoods in the face of uncertain water availability.

The country is making efforts to improve water planning and build capacity in the regions so they can have better information about their water availability, current water uses and potential future developments.

Bolivia’s Ministry of Environment and Water was keen to have a uniform dataset that could act as a baseline to inform water planning in the regions. It engaged SEI to help develop this “national water balance” using our Water Evaluation And Planning (WEAP) system.

Setting the stage for a sustainable future

The completed model, which SEI unveiled in November 2017, contains information about all available water supply in Bolivia, using data from field measurements and satellite records. To create this model, SEI collaborated with the Ministry of Environment and Water, the Institute of Hydraulics and Hydrology at the Higher University of San Andrés in La Paz, and the Laboratory of Hydrology at the University of San Simón in Cochabamba.

SEI and its partners used new computational methods, including automatic catchment delineation and gridded climate data, to bring the data together in a WEAP platform.

While the public can access the platform through a web system called Geovisor, the platform also includes a suite of tools for researchers and local water planners to update and refine the model. The Ministry and SEI organised a series of training and discussion sessions with planners to make sure that these tools were well understood, and used effectively.

Through these sessions, 40 Bolivian water planners were successfully trained in using WEAP and other data processing tools to assess current and future water availability – one of the primary impacts of the project. We also developed training materials to replicate these capacity-building sessions for future water managers.

The successful implementation of this project was due to the Ministry’s trust in SEI’s capacity to lead this effort. SEI was a catalyst in bringing together actors that normally don’t sit in the same room, such as researchers from competing academic organisations and from different regions of the country. This strong partnership ensured not only a strong model, but also a trusted one that has the buy-in of a diverse set of stakeholders.