Developing the Observatory on the Magdalena River basin
The Magdalena River basin is the largest Andean basin in South America and the most important in Colombia. It extends some 1,540 km and territorially comprises more than 70% of the country’s municipalities, where more than 80% of the country’s GDP is produced.
CORMAGDALENA is the entity in charge of recovering and maintaining the navigability of the Magdalena River as a contribution to the country’s competitiveness, guaranteeing its sustainable development and helping to improve the quality of life of the riverside communities.
From October 2021, IDOM has been accompanying CORMAGDALENA in the design and implementation of the Master Plan for the Integral Management and Sustainable Use of the Magdalena River Basin. This plan will allow, above all, to investigate and understand the behaviour of the river and the basin.
As part of this plan, IDOM has designed and developed the OBMA observatory (Observatorio del Rio Magdalena) which is a public consultation instrument to access over 40 indicators that show the behaviour of the basin from the environmental, water, social and economic perspectives.
The development of the PMMIUS plan and the implementation of the OBMA observatory will make it possible to:
- CORMAGDALENA to have a decision support system for the Magdalena River to improve synergies between users, plan interventions, minimise contingencies, understand the water system and be accountable for the integrated management of the tributary.
- Stakeholders related to the basin (such as municipalities, governments, environmental entities, etc.) to have access to relevant information to support decision making for institutional management.
“As a team we continue working with all the entities to monitor and plan actions that benefit our river artery, making progress in the construction of our Observatory of the basin, which will be a fundamental instrument to study the Magdalena River in a comprehensive manner and to inform all Colombians of what is happening along its course,” said Pedro Pablo Jurado, director of Cormagdalena during the presentation of the Observatory to the actors involved.
September 22, 2022
