“Water must be considered as a priceless and vital common heritage of humanity and the ecosystems on which we depend.” Anne Grosperrin, vice-president of the French city of Lyon and president of the Greater Lyon Water Board, writes in an article for the French Le Monde:
We must fight the commercial and extractivist approach to managing this resource and instead focus on its environmental and democratic objectives. Although the causes are often well-documented, in the public debate and in the minds of users this information seems comparable to an increase in the price of oil, energy or wheat. This commercial and extractivist view of water management must be firmly challenged: on the contrary, it must be seen in the context of its environmental, democratic, solidarity and human rights objectives.
Water is priceless. Today, we must no longer consider water as a resource like so many others that are used for different purposes, but as a priceless and vital common heritage of humanity and all the ecosystems on which we depend.
In France, the principle on which the economic model of water management is based is misleading: It is said that “water pays for water”. In reality, when we pay our bill as users, we are not paying for the water, but for the water service. This economic model, introduced by the state in the 1990s, is now in crisis: public water services are facing multiple challenges and uncontrollable costs.
Worrying pollution
Climate change is exacerbating the pressures on water quantity and quality and is having a profound impact on the hydrological cycle, which is undergoing major disruptions at both global and local levels. These pressures are having a significant impact on public water services, which are having to expand their remits and adapt or even renew their infrastructure, sometimes reaching a dead end and revealing the limits of the current economic model.
Water is highly vulnerable to pollution from agricultural, industrial and domestic activities: PFAS, pesticides, nitrates, etc. This worrying pollution is causing and will continue to cause huge costs in the coming years, as it is necessary to ensure that water is safe to drink, but also to treat wastewater: these necessary remedies require billions of euros of investment by local authorities and accentuate territorial inequalities.
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