Integrated Water Resources Management

Globally abundant, but over-exploited and polluted by human activities, water has become a fragile resource, both in terms of quantity and quality, disputed between different usages (agriculture, drinking water, energy, tourism, navigation, etc.).

To deal with this situation, France opted in 1964 for an innovative management approach: management on a river basin scale, a mutually supportive system bringing together all the stakeholders in the basin, on both a small and large scale. This innovation, a veritable revolution at the time, served as a model throughout Europe before being widely exported internationally.

This management method is at the heart of the actions promoted by the French Water Partnership.

The members of the French Water Partnership support this approach, which must be adapted on a case-by-case basis depending on the context:

1. Taking into account the geographical characteristics of water resources, in accordance with the principle that “water knows no administrative boundaries”, enables a better approach between upstream and downstream, and between quantity and quality.
2. Within a basin-wide “Water Parliament”, this mode of operation fosters dialogue between the different groups of stakeholders, to better take into account the different types and uses of water, make water policy consistent with other policies (agriculture, energy, health…), enhance the importance of ecosystems, and enable a shared vision of strategies and priority funding.
3. Basin organizations must be equipped with sustainable financing systems that enable them to cover all their needs, i.e. the costs of managing and monitoring the resource (data acquisition, planning, consultation between users, etc.), the costs of building and operating facilities, and the operating costs of the basin organization itself. The various sources of funding can be: taxes (contribution from the State or States in the case of a transboundary basin organization), fees linked to uses ( hydro-electricity, irrigation, navigation, flood prevention), payments for project or services management and transfers from the international community.

Transboundary river management as recommended in the 1997 United Nations Convention, which came into force in August 2014, enables the implementation of coherent policies for integrated water resource management and environmental protection from a sustainable development perspective.