PORCHER Simon, La fin de l’eau ?, Eds Fayard, 259 pages.

At the 2023 World Water Conference, the UN Secretary-General said, “We have broken the water cycle, destroyed ecosystems and contaminated groundwater.”

We are heading towards a reduction in water resources because periods of intense drought harden the soil and during subsequent rains the water runs off and is no longer absorbed. The consequences are catastrophic, as the soil moisture content is too low for the groundwater to replenish itself. This will have consequences, among other things, on agricultural production, whose yields will decline and will lead to significant social consequences. The lack of water could become the main object of conflicts because drinking water is not a commodity like any other and it is not possible to depoliticize it because without water there is no life.

Water is everyone’s business, the shortage concerns each and every one of us. It is essential to address water management in a comprehensive manner in relation to ecosystems, biodiversity and climate change because it is a factor of economic and human development. Access to water must be a priority today, otherwise adaptation to climate change will not be possible.

Good water management is not relative to its ownership, but is a function of the ability to create good governance at the community level. Mechanisms must be built for large groups. The solutions to be adopted are necessarily local. Experiments in setting up rights of use already exist and make it possible to combine the market mechanism and public intervention. The financialization of water is not the solution.

We must reinvent the economic model of water to limit waste and preserve the quality of the resource, this requires a better readability of the price, the reuse of treated wastewater, the desalination of seawater, the collection of rainwater as well as the collection of water from fogs in arid areas, the remuneration of the sobriety of consumers and producers as well as a better application of the polluter-pays principle.

Simon Porcher is a professor of management sciences at the University of Paris Panthéon-Assas. His work focuses on the management and pricing of public water services.

Chronicle by Michel GABET