H1 2026 Evaluation
Suriname Reservoir Transparency
F21Opaque — Ranked #99 out of 167 countries
weight 30%
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weight 15%
weight 13%
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weight 8%
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Primary source evaluated
Suriname Water Resources Information System (SWRIS) — Anton de Kom University / WLA
https://www.swris.sr/data/reservoirslakeswetlands/Dimension breakdown
Data Availability
20% of total score
Current reservoir storage volume for Brokopondo (Afobaka) is not available through any public online dashboard. SPCS (Staatsolie Power Company Suriname), which operates the dam, occasionally issues press releases with water-level readings in feet (e.g. 239 ft in January 2025, 249.5 ft in September 2024, peak 264 ft in March 2022), but these are sporadic operational communications to the media, not systematic publication. EBS (nvebs.com) publishes no hydrological data. The WLA (Hydraulic Research Division / Hydromet Suriname) and SWRIS hold station data for 'Afobakka bov' and 'Brokopondo' on the Suriname River, but access requires submitting a written request form — data is not browsable or downloadable by the public without prior application.
Technical Accessibility
15% of total score
No REST API, no open data portal, and no downloadable files exist for Brokopondo reservoir data. SWRIS and WLA/Hydromet.sr both require users to submit a paper or web form (name, institution, purpose) before any data is released; the process is on-request, not self-serve. Data formats and response times are not disclosed. EBS publishes annual financial reports (PDF, last available for 2020) with no hydrological content. The SurinameOnline ArcGIS Open Data portal (data-surinameonline.opendata.arcgis.com) contains no reservoir storage data.
Coverage
30% of total score
Suriname has effectively one significant reservoir: the Prof. Dr. Ir. Van Blommenstein Lake (Brokopondo), at ~20,000 Mm³ total capacity and 1,560 km² surface. It constitutes virtually 100% of national artificial reservoir capacity. WLA maintains hydrometric stations at 'Afobakka bov' and 'Brokopondo' on the Suriname River, meaning monitoring infrastructure for the single nationally relevant reservoir does exist. However, because access to that station data requires a formal application rather than being publicly available, the effective publicly accessible coverage is near zero. Score reflects the paradox: 100% of national capacity is monitored by government instruments, but 0% is accessible to the public without a bureaucratic request.
Historical Depth
13% of total score
No publicly accessible historical time series for Brokopondo water levels or storage volumes has been identified. SWRIS references discharge data for the Suriname River as far back as 1961–1970 in documents, and WLA is the custodian of multi-decadal hydrometric records, but these are not published online and require formal request. The SWRIS water resources assessment document (2017) discusses historical flow data but does not provide downloadable series. Press reports yield isolated data points for 2022–2025 only. No machine-readable multi-year archive is publicly accessible.
Update Frequency
10% of total score
No scheduled, recurring public data publication exists. SPCS issues press releases about reservoir levels only during exceptional events (extreme floods in April 2022, extreme drought crisis in January 2025). Media reports citing SPCS or EBS sporadically mention water level in feet during crises. WLA collects data at hourly or daily resolution internally (the request form lists hourly, daily and monthly options), but publication to the public is purely on-demand and non-routine. There is no dashboard, bulletin, or periodic report with a defined update cadence.
Methodological Transparency
8% of total score
No publicly accessible methodology document for Brokopondo reservoir monitoring has been found. WLA/Hydromet.sr uses standard hydrometric methods (pressure sensors, staff gauges) as referenced in SWRIS portal descriptions, and MAS uses pressure sensors for tidal stations, but no specific measurement protocol for the Afobaka reservoir level gauge is publicly documented. A UNDP-commissioned Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for WLA exists (October 2024) but the document returned a 403 Forbidden error, indicating it is not openly accessible. A 2022 Worley technical review of the Afobaka HPP and Brokopondo Reservoir (eas.sr) recommended that SPCS formalise operational and hydrological data procedures, implying these were not yet codified at that date.
Language and Usability
5% of total score
Dutch is the sole official language of Suriname and all institutional data portals (SWRIS, Hydromet.sr, nvebs.com, gov.sr) operate exclusively in Dutch. SPCS and Staatsolie occasionally publish English-language press releases on their corporate sites (staatsolie.com), and the English Wikipedia article provides background. However, no data portal, request form, or hydrological publication is available in English. International users cannot navigate the SWRIS or Hydromet.sr request systems without Dutch proficiency. Suriname EITI scored low on dissemination, reinforcing the limited international accessibility of national data.
Evaluator notes
Suriname's reservoir transparency situation is paradoxical: the country has effectively a single nationally significant reservoir — the Prof. Dr. Ir. Van Blommenstein Lake (Brokopondo), created by the Afobaka Dam on the Suriname River — which is one of the largest artificial lakes in the world by surface area (~1,560 km²) and nearly the sole source of national hydroelectric power. Monitoring infrastructure clearly exists: the WLA (Hydraulic Research Division, under Hydromet Suriname) maintains hydrometric stations at Afobaka and Brokopondo, and the SWRIS academic portal lists these among its station networks. However, the entire data ecosystem operates behind a request barrier: no data is freely downloadable and no API or open portal exists. Public awareness of reservoir levels happens exclusively through crisis-driven press releases from the operator SPCS (Staatsolie Power Company Suriname), which referenced water levels in feet during the 2022 flood and the severe 2024–2025 drought crisis. EBS (N.V. Energiebedrijven Suriname), often cited as the dam operator in older sources, appears to be the electricity distributor rather than the current dam operator; the dam transferred from Suralco/Alcoa to Surinamese state ownership, with SPCS taking over operations. The 2022 Worley technical review of the Afobaka HPP explicitly recommended that SPCS implement formalised procedures for communicating hydrological data, indicating that as of that date no such procedure existed. A UNDP SOP for WLA was published in October 2024, suggesting some institutional capacity-building is underway, though the document itself was not publicly accessible during this review. Suriname scored only 58.5 points in the 2024 EITI assessment, with particularly low scores on dissemination — consistent with the pattern of data being collected but not shared proactively. The RTI score for Suriname reflects a Tier-E classification: monitoring infrastructure exists at the institutional level, but public access to reservoir data is effectively non-existent without bureaucratic friction. The single-reservoir structure of the national system means that any improvement in publishing Brokopondo data would immediately represent a dramatic jump in all RTI dimensions.
Evaluated by Jaime Delgado · 2026-09-15 · Methodology v1.3.0