Eastern Europe and the Caucasus

Riverside has designed and implemented a number of important water resources projects in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, focusing on water monitoring, transboundary water resources data exchange, flood forecasting, and institutional development of water organizations.

Eastern Europe

Romania
Riverside staff have been instrumental in strengthening local and national water resource organizations in Romania. Riverside helped establish and develop over 90 Water User Associations (WUAs) covering 50,000 ha in Romania. Using intensive, hands-on training programs, Riverside staff traveled throughout Romania focusing on the purpose and function of WUAs, how to build local rural organizations, key organization design principles, and how to properly manage and sustain WUAs. This training and institutional development program was so popular and successful that many Romanian WUAs members arrived unexpectedly at training sessions asking to be included. Additionally, Riverside installed the RiverTrak^® hydrologic forecasting system in a major Romanian river basin plagued by severe flooding. As part of RiverTrak^® system installation and implementation, Riverside engineers also trained Romanian hydrologists in RiverTrak^® system operations.

Moldova
Riverside staff helped conduct an in-depth assessment of Moldova's irrigated agriculture, concluding that lack of irrigation is a major constraint to the productivity and financial sustainability of small-to-medium sized farms. As part of this assessment, Riverside staff discovered that there are pockets or islands of institutional entrepreneurship existing in rural Moldova, largely self-supporting WUAs, an indication of their institutional resiliency and tenacity.

The Caucasus

Water is the one technical area that the three Caucasus countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia) agree is of mutual interest and can be discussed even though political disputes may separate them. Riverside staff helped develop the methods, processes, and systems for collecting, analyzing, and sharing water resources data between these three countries. Riverside projects have focused on monitoring water quantity and quality in transboundary river basins, developing a regional framework for a Geographic Information System, and promoting integrated basin planning on two cross-border sub-basins. Riverside helped train and develop local capacity for water resources data collection and exchange, enabling local staff to install, operate, and maintain automated water monitoring equipment.

For a complete list of Riverside projects in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, please click here.