On Thursday 20 June the local water management forum was held in Rennes, an event at which HAMAP-Humanitaire organised a conference entitled « World Water Forum: what does it bring back to local authorities? », with Abdoulaye Sene, executive secretary of the 9th World Water Forum held in Dakar last March.
The conference, open to all, was aimed particularly at local authorities. They have a crucial role to play because of the French Oudin Santini law of 2005, which allows them to devote up to 1% of their water and sanitation budget to funding international solidarity work in these sectors.
Martine Gernez, president of HAMAP-Humanitaire, opened the conference by raising the notion of a « blue deal » and reminding the audience that we are all its ambassadors. This blue deal comes from the Dakar declaration signed at the close of the Forum.
It must, among other things, guarantee the right to water and sanitation for all, speed up the application of the right to drinking water and sanitation for all, further 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 water governance.
Sandra Metayer, coordinator at Coalition Eau, then spoke to present Coalition Eau, a collective of French NGOs working on water and sanitation. She stressed that the climate crisis is a water crisis and that human activity puts heavy pressure on water resources.
Abdoulaye Sene, guest of honour at this conference, gave an assessment of the World Water Forum. He too recalled the importance of the « blue deal » and explained that the pact adopted at the close of the forum is a vehicle for peace and development. It was in fact named the « Dakar Water Pact for Peace and Development ». The aim is to mobilise the main actors in basin management and to influence significantly the progress and conclusions of the March 2023 United Nations Water Conference around the global need to speed up the integrated management of resources under the Sustainable Development Goal dedicated to clean water and sanitation.
Perrine Bouteloup, project officer at pS-Eau and Lucas Giboin, project officer at Cites Unies France went on to speak about the action plan of mayors and local and regional governments for water security.
The conference closed with a contribution from Michel Demolder, president of the Eau du Bassin Rennais authority, who spoke about the decentralised cooperation between Eau du Bassin Rennais and Beitunia (Palestine), with the support of the NGO HAMAP-Humanitaire as project management assistant. He concluded by recalling that calling on an NGO helps give cooperation new energy and makes cooperation from citizen to citizen possible.