Feasibility Study for an environmental monitoring system on the Senegal River

For years, the basin of the river Senegal has undergone an acceleration of the degradation process of the environment.

As the Ministers' Council of OMVS (Organisation for the Management of the Senegal River) wished to set up a monitoring system on the environment in the basin, the French Ministry of Cooperation commissioned IOWater to take care of this project.

Objectives:
- Examine the conditions for setting up this environmental monitoring system at OMVS with a priority on problems related to water management (quality in particular) and the preservation of ecosystems;
- Define a work programme, separating the activities which are directly conducted by the OMVS unit from the activities entrusted to national or foreign specialised partners;
- Determine the institutional and operational relations between the OMVS unit to be created and the various private or public administrative structures of the Member-States;
- Assess the kind of funding necessary and the requirements of the monitoring system and determine the conditions for capacity building.

The study enabled the definition of the conditions required for the setting up of this system by identifying the possible objectives of the system as well as the formulation of a 3-year development programme leading to the implementation of an environmental inventory of the whole Senegal river basin.