The Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) has announced that a Euro-Mediterranean conference on water opened in Tunis on Monday 5 December.
This is the second conference of its kind and it is due to examine the project on the governance and financing of the Mediterranean water sector. It was launched in 2013 under the UfM label and conducted jointly by the Global Water Partnership for the Mediterranean (GWP-Med) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
According to those who initiated it, the project aims "to deliver a set of country analyses and a regional action plan to improve the public governance and attract investments" for the water sector of the Mediterranean region. According to GWP-Med, this is because the region is "poor in water" and this resource is unequally shared, with its quality declining due to human and industrial pollution, as well as intensive groundwater abstraction made worse by the growing population.
"Pressure on the resource is growing" in a context of climate change, says the French institute for research on development (IRD), adding that "irrigation alone mobilises 60-80% of the demand for water in the Mediterranean basin". (Original version in French by Fathi B'chir)