On 12 November 2015, the Plurinational State of Bolivia and the Kingdom of Belgium signed the specific convention for the Project of identification, inventory-making and valorization of the cultural heritage in the Titicaca Lake basin in Bolivia, henceforth referred to as “Lake Project”.

Overall aim of the Lake Project is to contribute to the improved community management of the Titicaca Lake basin cultural heritage and to promote the development of the community cultural tourism. 

More specifically, aim of the Lake Project is to ensure that the archaeological cultural heritage both under water and on the shorelines of the Titicaca Lake in Bolivia, that belongs to priority Communities, be identified, registered, characterized, valorized and safeguarded, and also that the capacities of management and economic development of the local stakeholders be strengthened.

Expected outcomes of the Lake Project are as follows:

• Outcome 1: Both the cultural heritage under water and on the shorelines within the priority areas was identified and recorded based on specific archaeological techniques.
• Outcome 2: Protection of the cultural archaeological heritage by using legal instruments and global management tools. 
• Outcome 3: Strengthened actions relating to the cultural archaeological heritage of the priority Municipalities, of their autonomous municipal and community governments, with capacity building and by providing instruments for the touristic management of their cultural heritage, this being an integrated cross-cutting part of the Lake Project.
• Outcome 4: Improvement, documentation and dissemination of the communities’ material and immaterial heritage based on a better knowledge of their ancestral cultures and on the outcomes of their research.

The Lake Project has 3-year duration and a total budget of 1,599,706 millions Euros. The Project will be executed in accordance with Belgian regulations in the 13 priority Municipalities of the Project: Guaqui, Tiahuanaco, Escoma, Puerto Acosta, Carabuco, Ancoraimes, Batallas, San Pedro de Tiquina, Tito Yupanqui, Copacabana, Puerto Perez, Pucarani, and Santiago de Huata.

The Belgian Technical Cooperation – Enabel

The Belgian Technical Cooperation – Enabel (BTC–Enabel) is the development cooperation agency providing support to the implementation of development programs on behalf of the Belgian State and other donors in 14 countries worldwide in order to eradicate poverty and help achieve a sustainable development. To its partners, the BTC provide expertise as well as human and financial resources, and all its activities are based on its core principles of transparency and integrity.

Aim of the BTC is to achieve that men and women live in respect of the rule of law, enjoy equal access to quality public services and the freedom of pursuing their aspirations

The BTC-Enabel:

• Promotes the sustainable family agriculture in order to improve food security and contribute to an inclusive economic growth,
• Supports the use of digital technologies to enhance development and enable the most vulnerable population groups to provide better services to the citizens,
• Seeks to ensure access to water and basic sanitation in order to improve public health, environment, gender equality and economics,
• Promotes education programs in the context of economic and personal development,
• Increases the access of households, enterprises and institutions to energy in order to improve population’s lives.
• Aims at strengthening gender equity,
• Promotes health programs to ensure that targeted population groups can contribute to the development of their country.

Thus, the BTC’s work seeks to help realizing a society offering to present and upcoming generations all necessary means to build up a just, fair and sustainable world.

The Belgian cooperation began its activities in Bolivia in 1974 with actions based on local priorities and achieved to develop programs meeting the country development needs, thus contributing to poverty reduction, to advances regarding the implementation of a sustainable development and to the reduction of inequalities.

The BTC executed the implementation of cooperation projects jointly with the government of the Plurinational State of Bolivia. In Bolivia, priority actions relate to the sectors of health, environment and water, rural development and inter-culturality, a special emphasis being placed on the integration of cross-cutting approaches such as gender, climate change, sustainability and strengthening both institutional and individual competencies.

Project background 

The Lake Project goes back to and roots in the Huiñaimarca Project, which was a 2012-2015 PhD research project led by Dr. Christophe Delaere of the free University of Brussels (ULB) through the Research Center for Archaeology and Heritage (CReA-Patrimoine), that exclusively concentrated on the study and valorization of the underwater heritage of the Titicaca Lake in Bolivia. This project, aimed at valorizing this unknown heritage, proposed a several year plan including systematic surveys on the context of the underwater archaeological conservation of Lake Titicaca, in close collaboration with the Ministry of Culture, the UDAM, local communities and the Municipalities.

The research project was focused on studying the Tiwanaku pre-Inca culture with its different phases of appearance, evolution and peak, all intrinsically related to the Paleolithic environmental factors that marked the pace of the historical land use of the Titicaca Lake basin. In 2012, SONAR operations of geophysical prospection and calibration were carried out in the Titicaca Lake (Huiñaimarca 2012 - Project PH12). In 2013, M. Christophe Delaere submitted above mentioned project to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Plurinational State of Bolivia and, in same year, the first operations of prospection and underwater excavations in the Titicaca Lake were started (Huiñaimarca 2013 - PH13 Project). This project involved a delegation of researchers with different nationalities and fields of expertise, and focused on identifying the different components of the underwater archaeological documentation. Excavations on the archaeological site of “Khoa” revealed size and quality of the submerged heritage. Preliminary data on the historical level fluctuations of the Lake waters were published by the research and have shown that, around 900 A.D., the Lake water level was 6 meters lower than presently, which means that the current shorelines were several kilometers further away inland. Later, in 2014 (Huiñaimarca 2014 -  PH14 Project), a third exploration campaign was carried out, mainly in the Municipality of Copacabana, and in parallel, an important work of conditioning and conserving the project findings of the previous year took place. It is in this precise PhD project that the Project of identification, inventory-making and valorization of the cultural heritage in the Titicaca Lake basin is rooted. It has been submitted during the Bolivian-Belgian Commission meeting of February 2014 and included a financing agreement by the Belgian Cooperation.