Argentina’s Water Plan
Argentina´s National Water Plan
by Pablo Bereciartua, Under Secretary for Water Resources of Argentina
In April 2016 Argentina has put together an ambitious National Water Plan, which is very much in line with the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals of the UN. It is a plan based on both the Public and Private capacities of investing and also of deploying interesting and key projects for the country. Our plan has four main investing axis: The first one is Water Supply and Sanitation, where we want to reach 100% of clean water supply and over 75% of sewage and water treatment disposal capacity across the country. The second axis is adapting the territory to the climate variability and to Climate Change. Argentina has an extended territory, which is very sensitive to the climate, so we have investments in Infrastructure and also in Technology in order to reach that level of adaptation. The third axis is developing large scale multi-purpose dams, important projects for the development of arid and semi-arid parts of the country. And the fourth component of our investing plan is what we call Water for Production. In this axis we want to extend our agricultural frontier. Argentina has the potential to include over 4 million more hectares into production, and our plan has set the goal to include one million of them. Our plan also has four very important implementation axis:
Pablo Bereciartua is Argentina’s Under Secretary for Water Resources, a position to which he was appointed in December 2015.
In the public sector, he has served as the Director of Infrastructure for the City of Buenos Aires, where he faced both enormous challenges and opportunities to apply new technologies to the city and regional infrastructure.
Pablo is a professor at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and former dean at the Buenos Aires Institute of Technology (ITBA), where he focused on teaching and researching the link between technology, infrastructure and social and economic impact. He also serves as vice president of the Argentinean Social Forum, and has shared his ideas on innovation, education, technology, the future of mobility and cities across media platforms in Argentina. He is also Vice President of the Argentinean Engineering Center and member of the Institute of Transport of the National Academy of Engineering.
A trained engineer, he graduated with honors from Universidad Nacional de la Plata, Argentina. He also holds graduate degrees from University of California at Berkeley and the UNESCO-IHE Institute in Delft, The Netherlands; and has earned fellowships from Fulbright, Eisenhower Foundation, Yale World Fellow, and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA).
Pablo is founder and CEO of Bereco SA & Bereco Labs, Inc., a company focused on innovation, technology and management. He is also the founder of other technology based companies such as B3 and Agro Appgrade SA.
In April 2016 Argentina has put together an ambitious National Water Plan, which is very much in line with the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals of the UN. It is a plan based on both the Public and Private capacities of investing and also of deploying interesting and key projects for the country. Our plan has four main investing axis: The first one is Water Supply and Sanitation, where we want to reach 100% of clean water supply and over 75% of sewage and water treatment disposal capacity across the country. The second axis is adapting the territory to the climate variability and to Climate Change. Argentina has an extended territory, which is very sensitive to the climate, so we have investments in Infrastructure and also in Technology in order to reach that level of adaptation. The third axis is developing large scale multi-purpose dams, important projects for the development of arid and semi-arid parts of the country. And the fourth component of our investing plan is what we call Water for Production. In this axis we want to extend our agricultural frontier. Argentina has the potential to include over 4 million more hectares into production, and our plan has set the goal to include one million of them. Our plan also has four very important implementation axis:
- The first one is Innovation. We want to develop the plan according to the full capacity of the technology available today and in the future.
- The second is Capacity Building. Our plan will be successful according to the capacities of both the Public and the Private organizations.
- The third one is Participation. We are fully aware that successful projects and policies need a high level of stakeholder participation.
- And the fourth axis is Preserving the Natural Resources, and Water in particular.
Pablo Bereciartua is Argentina’s Under Secretary for Water Resources, a position to which he was appointed in December 2015.
In the public sector, he has served as the Director of Infrastructure for the City of Buenos Aires, where he faced both enormous challenges and opportunities to apply new technologies to the city and regional infrastructure.
Pablo is a professor at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and former dean at the Buenos Aires Institute of Technology (ITBA), where he focused on teaching and researching the link between technology, infrastructure and social and economic impact. He also serves as vice president of the Argentinean Social Forum, and has shared his ideas on innovation, education, technology, the future of mobility and cities across media platforms in Argentina. He is also Vice President of the Argentinean Engineering Center and member of the Institute of Transport of the National Academy of Engineering.
A trained engineer, he graduated with honors from Universidad Nacional de la Plata, Argentina. He also holds graduate degrees from University of California at Berkeley and the UNESCO-IHE Institute in Delft, The Netherlands; and has earned fellowships from Fulbright, Eisenhower Foundation, Yale World Fellow, and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA).
Pablo is founder and CEO of Bereco SA & Bereco Labs, Inc., a company focused on innovation, technology and management. He is also the founder of other technology based companies such as B3 and Agro Appgrade SA.
