The Thaketa Climate Adaptation for Water Security Project is a 2-year pilot project aiming to design, implement and evaluate a variety of climate adaptation interventions in the Thaketa township in Yangon, Myanmar.
In the pilot project, the partners will establish an innovative network-driven stakeholder participation process for designing and implementing different types of climate adaptation interventions, based on the social innovation approach from one of the most successful, innovative climate adaptation programs in the Netherlands: Amsterdam Rainproof. The project will be supported by community awareness and education campaigns and capacity building for YCDC staff.
The pilot project is undertaken at the request of the Yangon Region Government and Yangon City Development Committee and funded together by the consortium partners (below), the Yangon Region Government and the Dutch Government (Partners poor Water program).
The companies working together in the Thaketa project consortium are: The Water Agency (lead), Doh Eain, Infram, Witteveen+Bos, Resilience, World Waternet, U.Minds and Water Bridge Myanmar.
For more information about the project, please contact Gregor van Essen, Project Director, at [email protected].
A strong coalition of Dutch companies and organisations has signed an agreement to jointly invest and collaborate in a comprehensive 3-year program to support the Yangon Regional Government in addressing critical challenges related to Urban Water and Water Logistics. The agreement is signed under the Dutch government Partners for International Business (PIB) program.
The agreement delivers on a promise by the coalition to H.E. Phyo Min Thein, the Regional Chief Minister of Yangon, in June this year, when he visited the Netherlands (LINK). During this visit, he requested Dutch expertise and advise on key topics related to Urban Water: water supply, water resources, water governance and water innovation; and Water Logistics: Yangon sea port, river transport, river dredging and river tunneling.
Let’s talk about Water. We will set up the casual meeting with the experts around the world to share experience as well as learn new things in the same table.
The GFC—under the Prosperity Fund—aims to address transport, urban planning and resilience in 19 cities around the world. In Myanmar, Yangon is the targeted city with focus on heritage in urban development and flood resilience.
In particular, the programme aims to assist city planning by developing integrated interventions on heritage in urban development and flood resilience.
The primary objectives of the Programme include helping cities grow in a sustainable manner, improving residents' quality of life, addressing poverty and improving gender equality. Additionally, the Programme aims to create two-way investment and trade opportunities with international businesses.
The programme is currently in its Strategic Development Phase implemented by a global team with UN-Habitat as strategic partner. Partners include the UK Built Environment Advisory Group (UKBEAG) as the professional partner and the International Growth Centre IGC) as the academic partner. During this phase, the final interventions under the two thematic areas will be clearly defined and the Statement of Requirements will be developed. From November the programme will enter the Implementation Phase which will include a procurement process towards the end of 2018 and beginning of the on the ground work by mid-2019.
More information on the Prosperity Fund:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cross-government-prosperity-fundprogramme
The project is the bilateral cooperation between the French Development Agency (AFD) and the Yangon City Development Committee (YCDC) that aims at financing the improvement of water service management in Tarmwe Township in Yangon. The project will last until 2018.
The project seeks to implement a technical and commercial management model for the municipality’s water service in the pilot district of Tarmwe in order to address the issue of “non-revenue water” that refers to water that is lost before reaching the customer (physical losses) or unaccounted for (commercial losses).
The project has three components: firstly, equipping the pilot district with the necessary measurement tools for water service management; secondly, strengthening the district water service capacities; and thirdly, providing management tools that allow the replication of such model in other districts of the city. Yangon City Development Committee will implement the project with the support of a technical operator to be selected through a tendering procedure.
"The Project for Capacity Development in Basic Water Environmental Management and EIA System in Myanmar", will be implemented by Environmental Conservation Department (ECD), Yangon City Development Committee (YCDC) and Mandalay City Development Committee (MCDC) in cooperation with Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). The project activities in Myanmar started in June 2015, and will last until May 2018.
The purposes of the Project are to obtain enough capacity for developing basic water pollution control measures based on the acquired and analyzed information, and to establish institutional framework of the EIA review. Five (5) Japanese Experts will be dispatched to ECD to work in close cooperation with its staff both in office and on site. The team of Experts will also work closely with the officials of Pollution Control and Cleansing Department and Water and Sanitation Department of YCDC and Water Supply and Sanitation Department of MCDC.
The project activities are divided into two components: namely (i) the water environment management component and (ii) the EIA component. Among the six outputs of the project, the water environment management component covers standardization of environmental inspection (Output 1), water quality survey (Output 2), development of databases of pollution sources and river water quality (Output 3), and interpretation of information for water pollution control measures (Output 4).
Activities of the water environment management component of the project are being implemented in three cities in Myanmar, namely Yangon, Mandalay and Nay Pyi Taw. The water quality component has two target areas, Hlaing River basin in Yangon and Doke Hta Waddy River basin in Mandalay. These areas were selected to investigate the impact of industrial effluent from industrial zones on water quality of rivers.
Mandalay Urban Services Improvement Project (MUSIP) aims to improve access to sustainable water and sanitation services in Mandalay, the second-largest city in Myanmar, and to enhance the service provision capacity of Mandalay City Development Committee (MCDC).
The general objective of the project is to assist MCDC in its strategy to turn Mandalay into a Green City, with a particular focus on improved environmental performance, equity in service provision and improved finances. More specifically, the project aims to provide a reliable and sustainable public water service in Mandalay. Another key objective is to improve access to sanitation and reduce the amount of wastewater discharged directly into the environment and to enhance local capacities for public services management.
The project, which results from a feasibility study co-financed by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Agence Française de Développement (AFD), will be divided into three components - aimed at achieving the goals outlined above.
MUSIP supports the AIF objective of promoting a green economy through its contribution to sustainable water resource management, by sustaining the groundwater table, improving the efficiency of water use and reducing pollution. The project will also have a social impact by increasing access to clean drinking water and sanitation. By improving the drainage system in the city, the MUSIP project will also have an environmental impact, by reducing the frequency and intensity of flooding.
Due to the need for more smart data measurements and analyses to be able to adequately choose the most sustainable solutions for water and resource management, Ministry of Transport and Communication (MOTC), Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation (MOALI) and Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation (MONREC) are working together with TU Delft and the partners of VPdelta to jointly develop smart ways to collect these data. The project called “Leapfrogging Delta Management in Myanmar” was initiated by TU Delft, FutureWater and HKV Consultants, and funded under the Partners for Water program by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO).
In response to the request of the NWRC in Myanmar and the interest of Dutch innovative enterprises, the project’s main aim is to extend the current work in the Bago-Sittaung to the whole Ayeyarwady Delta in accordance with the agreement between the Myanmar and Dutch governments. The aim is to test and demonstrate innovative smart information solutions in the Delta and disseminate the results widely. Coalitions are created around specific information products (e.g. rainfall, erosion, subsidence). In each coalition, partners work on innovative monitoring: to combine remote sensing, ground data collection with modelling techniques.
The results of the project will be presented in an online platform to disseminate the products and services to a local and international audience. Throughout the entire project Dutch and Myanmar experts and young professionals will work together (learning-by-doing) and dissemination and training will be organized.
The collaborators of the project are: Myanmar National Water Resources Committee (NWRC), MOTC, DWIR, MOALI, MONREC, Irrigation Technology Center (Bago), Yangon Technological University, Myanmar Maritime University, VPdelta, TU Delft, Disdrometrics, FutureWater, Akvo, SHORE Monitoring & Research, Mobile Water Management, HKV Lijn in Water, SkyGeo, Wavedroid, VanderSat.
Myanmar Government has received a US$100 million credit from the Word Bank for the Ayeyarwady Integrated River Basin Management (AIRBM) Project. The objective of the AIRBM Project is to help Myanmar develop the institutions and tools needed to enable informed decision making in the management of Myanmar’s water resources and to implement integrated river basin management of the Ayeyarwady Basin. The AIRBM Project includes three components: i) Water Resources Management Institutions, Decision Support System, and Capacity Building; ii) Hydro-Meteorological Observation and Information Systems Modernization; and iii) Navigation Enhancement of the Ayeyarwady. The implementing agency of the AIRBM Project is the Directorate of Water Resources and Improvement of River Systems (DWIR) of the Ministry of Transport and Communications (MoTC).
The Project:
In February 2016 the Myanmar’s cabinet approved a plan for a suspended bridge which will link Yangon, the country’s main economic center, with the underdeveloped Dala Township. Due to the increasing housing demand combined with the growing land price in Yangon, a rapid urbanization is expected to take place in Dala after the construction of the bridge.
Our mission is to lay the foundation for an innovative approach for a sustainable urban development of Dala which can be set as an example for other analogous cases around the world. In September and October we will be working on this project on site in Yangon.
In collaboration with the local university and professionals, we will explore a series of designs and institutional solutions for a sustainable integration of the following aspects:
- Water urban infrastructures
- Transport system
- Institutional measures
The Ayeyarwady Delta is a very complex and vulnerable system, facing impacts of climate change and future socio-economic developments. Myanmar and the Netherlands are working step by step together in the development of an Integrated Ayeyarwady Delta Strategy (IADS).