Paraguay - Urban environmental planning and location of landfills

Country / Region: Paraguay / America
Focus: Environmental geology/Land-use planning/Institutional support

Begin of project: August 1, 2000

End of project: October 24, 2012

Status of project: March 6, 2013

Uncontrolled disposal of waste, particularly in the more densely populated parts of Paraguay, leads to a growing burden on the environment Source: BGR

Paraguay is a country with high population growth, but without sufficiently developed land-use or environmental planning. Urban and rural settlement areas are therefore spreading out in a disorderly manner, usually with consequences that are highly problematic for the environment:

• Inadequate waste and sewage disposal,
• uncontrolled pollution surface and groundwater,
• large-scale land use

This leads to burdens on and destruction of critical resources and is associated with huge economic and social costs for protection or even remediation/restoration of these resources. Appropriate tools and capacities are currently lacking at the national, regional and especially local levels for implementing environmentally sound land-use planning of urban areas and for sustainable resource management.

For this reason, Paraguay has requested special German support within the context of technical cooperation, which has been granted since 2002 with the project goal.

Effective and modern planning tools and sustainable development concepts will be successfully used in selected cities, departments and the Ministry of Environment for environmentally oriented planning and resource protection.

The project sponsor, the Secretaría del Ambiente (SEAM, Ministry of Environment), was established in July 2000. The responsibilities regarding environmental concerns formerly shared by several ministries were combined into this one body. Its responsibilities include the development, implementation and monitoring of environmental policy in Paraguay.

The project, which was started in January of 2002, has been in its second implementation phase since 2007. This phase will continue until December of 2011. The total cost of the German contribution amounts to approximately 4 million euro.

In the first phase (2002-2007), important foundations were created by the Ministry of Environment (SEAM) for proper environmental planning (e.g. satellite image interpretation, resource protection maps, policy for landfill sites, and draft for a land-use planning law). Base maps of the geo-environment and GIS from previous projects of technical cooperation were applied to the project and have been further developed.

The second phase (2007-2011) deals primarily with the dissemination and application of the previously developed results in the cities and departments of selected regions. By so doing, SEAM would like to hand over some of their tasks to the regional governments (decentralization). In this second phase, the project started its cooperation with five cities (Capiatá, Ñemby, Paraguarí, Lima and Benjamin Aceval) and one department (Guairá).

The German contribution includes technical and organizational consulting, qualification of partner personnel and the provision of supplementary equipment. Key elements of partner support are the establishment of environmental and planning departments at local and regional level, the exemplary creation of resource conservation maps and the promotion of measures for the protection of resources by local subsidies.

Technical Cooperation with Paraguay

Project website: Proyecto Ordenamiento Ambiental de Zonas Urbanas (ORDAZUR)

Project-No.: 2000.2067.7

Project-ID: 567

Partner:

Secretaría del Ambiente (SEAM)