WT52 – Water management

In partnership with :

World Water Council / Conseil Mondial de l’Eau : www.worldwatercouncil.org
Ville de Marseille (City of Marseille) : www.marseille.fr
Région Provence Alpes Côte d’ Azur (PACA) www.cr-paca.fr

Workshop Presentation

Life on earth depends on water and it is the primary need of societies. Water is used everywhere in farming, in daily life, in all production processes, and in leisure activities. Both abundant globally and apparently free, water is distributed unequally around the surface of the globe. Without proper management, this apparently abundant resource that is vital for life can very quickly became scarce and decline in quality in a more or less irreversible way. This is caused by the exhaustion, pollution or salinisation of the groundwater with increased competition for its use, with the pollution and draining of rivers and lakes, with the deterioration of marine ecosystems and of the coastal areas vital for their reproduction of species.

Water figures in the vast category of natural resources characterised on the one hand by the fact that their presence does not depend above all on human activity, which leads to a necessary principle of justice in their distribution whilst at the same time requiring sophisticated management measures in order to make it available and ensure its quality which make it at least partially a market commodity. Finally, like other things in this category such as energy and land, the management of water has to be thought about on different scales at the same time, from the most local level of the saving of water by individuals and families to the continental level of the management of the major water basins and world level of the management of the oceans.

For all these reasons, the issue of water is one of those that most urgently requires a revolution in governance. The objective of the workshop will be to compare European and Chinese experiences, to identify those that offer the most hope for the future and to define the most promising forms of cooperation in these fields in the decades to come.