The objective of the Senegal River Basin Water and Environmental Management Project, is to provide a participatory, strategic environmental framework for the environmentally sustainable development of the Senegal River Basin, and to launch a basin-wide cooperative program for trans-boundary land-water management. The first component will build a core group of specialists with trans-boundary environmental management expertise in the national institutions associated with the OMVS - Senegal River Basin Authority - and Guinea. Specifically, it will establish a dialogue with Guinea on its environmental management and legislation, through workshops, training, and information exchange, and strengthen the national and regional institutional and legislative capacity to enable the riparian countries to address priority trans-boundary water and environmental issues. Project management will support, and facilitate experiences' exchange of other GEF international waters projects, as well as technical capacity building, through regional efforts to assess invasive species (water weeds) management, and other issues. Activities under the second component will assess the status of OMVS country data, and, offer Guinea equitable opportunity to develop the technical tools needed for land, and water resources management, while promoting collaboration on basin-level information. Specifically, this will be achieved through studies, data assessment, monitoring, and knowledge baseline in the four riparian countries. A cartographic assessment of the Basin will be developed, and a baseline rainfall/flow model for the upper Basin prepared. Moreover, technical capacity will be strengthened through training, workshops, and equipment upgrade. Regional collaboration will be enhanced, to further establish a cooperative basin-related data management protocol for information exchange on the Basin resource management. A Trans-boundary Diagnostic Analysis (TDA), under the third component, will examine existing conditions, and management, and identify/analyze the Basin's trans-boundary issues, to propose options for addressing these issues, and any related socio-economic, and land-use issues.
