Regional environmental assessment of Argentina flood protection
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Background and objectives
A Regional Environment Assessment (REA) was undertaken for an investment programme to protect communities occupying the flood plains of the Paraguay, Parana and Uruguay rivers in northern Argentina. This region had suffered enormous losses from periodic flooding, but this natural process also sustains ecological systems and many forms of productive activities. A “living with floods” strategy was therefore developed with proposed flood defence construction works. Non-structural measures were also introduced, including strengthening institutional capacity and co-ordination to deal with periodic flooding, and upgrading flood warning systems and technical assistance support.
Approach
The REA was initiated at an early stage of the decision-making process and included:
- Description of the interaction of hydro-ecological and socio-economic systems of the region.
- Screening of potential investments to select sub-projects with clear economic, social and environmental benefits.
- Analysis of alternatives for each site using criteria of least possible interference with natural flooding patterns.
- Analysis of the cumulative effects of all flood protection projects.
- Public consultation aimed at improving the design of all sub-projects.
- Design changes to take into account the results of the REA and public consultations.
- Identification of mitigation and monitoring measures.
- Identification of institutional weaknesses in dealing with the flood problem.
- Recommendation for a regional action plans to address the issues identified.
Outcomes
The study found that many ecosystems and human activities depend to a great extent on the periodic floods. This had a direct impact on the way the project was designed. Criteria for the selection of investments were modified to ensure that flooding would continue, but not threaten human well-being and economic infrastructure. The study also documented the extent to which wetlands, gallery forests and aquatic ecosystems of the tributaries to the three rivers were threatened by human activities. It found that the most disruptive activities were road construction, followed by poorly planned urban expansion and effluent from the meat packing industry. The REA assisted the design of four key project components to help improve the environmental and economic benefits of the project:
- Strengthening EA procedures in key institutions within the seven provinces.
- Technical assistance for urban environmental management.
- Environmental education and awareness programmes in communities benefiting from protection works.
- Support to protection and management initiatives for wetlands and other ecosystems.
Perhaps the most important outcome of the Regional Environment Assessment was its direct contribution to screening of all potential investments under the project. It helped reduce the number of possible sub-projects from 150 to 51, all with a clear economic, social and environmental justification. Once these sub-projects had been selected, the REA team prepared project-specific EAs for each one. When they were completed, the REA team returned to examine the likely cumulative impacts of all the 51 sub-projects, to ensure that such impacts would be minimised.
Source: World Bank (1996); Kjørven and Lindjhem (2002).
(Reproduced with permission of OECD.)
