Carrefour des gestions locales de l’eau 2022
On Thursday, June 20, the carrefour des gestions locales de l’eau was held in Rennes. HAMAP-Humanitaire organized a conference entitled “World Water Forum: what returns for communities?” with Abdoulaye Sene, the executive secretary of the 9th World Water Forum.
The conference, open to all, was particularly aimed at local authorities. They have a crucial role to play because of the French law Oudin Santini of 2005, which authorizes them to devote up to 1% of their water and sanitation budget to finance international solidarity actions in these sectors.
Martine Gernez, president of HAMAP-Humanitaire, introduced the conference by evoking the notion of the “blue deal” and by reminding us that we are all ambassadors of it. This blue deal comes from the Dakar declaration signed at the end of the Forum.
It must guarantee the right to water and sanitation for all, accelerate the implementation of the right to drinking water and sanitation for all, promote the application of international humanitarian law, guarantee the availability of the resource and resilience, adopt sustainable and integrated management plans to preserve water resources and ecosystems and guarantee resilience in the face of climate change and demographic pressure, develop “blue” and “green” jobs, and ensure inclusive governance of water
Sandra Métayer, coordinator at Coalition Eau, presented Coalition Eau, a group of French NGOs working on water and sanitation. She reminded the audience that the climate crisis is a water crisis and that human activities exert a strong pressure on water resources.
Abdoulaye Sene made an assessment of the World Water Forum. He also recalled the importance of the “blue deal” and said that the pact adopted at the end of this forum is a vector for peace and development. The objective is to mobilize the main stakeholders in basin management and to significantly influence the progress and conclusions of the United Nations Water Conference of March 2023 around the global need to accelerate the implementation of the integrated resource management of the Sustainable Development Goal dedicated to clean water and sanitation.
Perrine Bouteloup, project manager at pS-Eau and Lucas Giboin, project manager at Cités Unies France talked about the Mayors and Local and Regional Governments Action Plan for Water Security.
Finally, the conference ended with the intervention of Michel Demolder, President of the Eau du Bassin Rennais, who spoke about the decentralized cooperation between the Bassin Rennais Authority and Beitunia (Palestine) with the support of the NGO HAMAP Humanitaire in project management assistance. He concluded by reminding that the help to an NGO helps to revitalize the cooperation and allows a cooperation from citizen to citizen.
