Stockholm-headquartered engineer Sweco has been retained to assess the consequences of raising the water level of Lake Sevan in Armenia by six metres to preserve it.
Covering more than 1,200 sq km, it’s the biggest lake in the Caucasus region, and provides Armenia with drinking water, irrigation, hydropower, biodiversity, and tourism income.
But it’s evaporating rapidly, having sunk 6.5m since 1903, and it now suffers from severe algal blooms.
The lake gets its name from a monastery established on an island in the 9th Century, now a peninsula.
Sweco joins a European Union initiative called “EU4Sevan” dedicated to restoring the lake’s health.
It’s funded by funded by the EU and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, and led by the United Nations Development Programme and the German development agency, GIZ.
Sweco experts from Czechia will use detailed mathematics and long-term data to model future climate change scenarios.
The goal is to help Armenia boost policy frameworks and build capacity for sustainable development planning.