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Under the auspices of the International Water Resources Association (IWRA), the 13th World Water Congress was held this year in Montpellier with the participation of a diverse and complementary expertise in the field of water sciences and related research. Dr. Hammou Laamrani, WaDImena Project Coordinator; Dr. Lamia El-Fattal, IDRC Senior Program Officer; Dr. Eglal Rached, IDRC/MERO Regional Director and Dr. Mark Redwood, IDRC Program Officer had attended the Congress and contributed a paper on the concepts and perspectives of water demand management in the MENA region. Posters were also presented by IDRC on water demand management and climate change and on greywater reuse.

The full paper and the posters are available at:

Poster - "Water Demand Management: A strategic climatic change adaptive strategy in water-scarce MENA?”

Poster - "Greywater Use in MENA:A water scarcity issue or a poverty alleviation strategy?"

Paper - "Gestion de la demande en Eau au Moyen Orient et en Afrique du Nord: Enjeux et perspectives"


Synthesis of the key elements extracted by IDRC from around 40 presentations at the Congress:

• The keynote presentation in Montpelier stressed the role of power relations in water and the political economy leading work we recently embarked on

• The General secretary of OECD, the president of IWRA and the winner of the Stockholm prize (Prof A. Allan, author of the Virtual Water) all emphasized the strategic role of Water demand in the future and underscored the importance of power relations as a bottleneck to its implementation. He also highlighted that Food crisis and energy crisis have both strong implications on water outlook in DC.

• A large number of presentations (perhaps 50%) related to changing water budgets and availability associated with climate change. Adaptation was a present and large thematic element in the event. An important conclusion coming from this work is saline intrusion associated with depleted groundwater resources. Most of the work was bio-physical science and less was presented on social/livelihood adaptation although it was present.

• A presentation on Water Soft Water Paths an extension of water demand management principles including the notion that forecasting should be replaced by “backcasting”; an idea that setting a target and figuring out scenarios and models and predicting efficiency improvements that may help meet that target. This is work that is being pioneered by David Brooks and Peter Kay (U of Waterloo).

• Little work was presented on urban water and sanitation; most presentations were focused on classic IWRM related work – irrigation management, hydrological modelling and science, multi-stakeholder approaches in water management….

• An excellent keynote talk by the founder of Barefoot College highlighted the importance of reclaiming historic rainwater catchment systems as an adaptive strategy to climate change.

• Some interest points were pulled from various sessions regarding barriers associated with demand management uptake. An important point was raised by the Singaporean Water Utility (who are engaged in WDM) that financial incentives to conserve are not strong for utilities; if a water utility sells less water, they make less money. This suggests that environmental costs must be incorporated into the marginal cost of water supply and for it to be reflected in the financial systems by which utilities operate. Secondly, WDM principles are best enshrined in a national water policy since to date, water economics do not encourage conservation principles. This, I believe, is an important conclusion for further discussion if IDRC`s WDM work is to be extended.

• There was a very good presentation on work in Australia related to behavioural motivators associated with water markets. A PhD. student used factor and cluster analysis to look at farm-level decision making. While profit making is traditionally seen as a main decision motivation, family ended up being more important. While this may seem like a reasonable assumption, what was interesting was the methodology employed to come to the conclusion.

• The Berlin Rules on International Water Management (2004) is a framework – yet to be ratified (as I understood) - that may supply water managers with “rules” associated with groundwater management and local participation in management etc. The Rules have been developed as an update to the 1966 Helsinki Rules that were developed to set international legal principles but which many countries did not ratify. The main improvement is that the Berlin rules include environmental principles which had not been included in the Helsinki rules.

2008-09-09

News 11 of 12