A message from the city of Marseille and its local authorities
Overcoming cycles of drought and the arid nature of our region Provence, providing water for everyone, taking into account demographic growth, evacuating and treating this water while ensuring its quality and safety, fighting the risks of flooding… these are just some of the challenges that Marseille and the region’s local authorities make efforts to control so as to give each inhabitant the fundamental right to water… a right which is from now on universally acknowledged, for providing water means ensuring life, health and food, economic and social vitality, development and harmony.
For close to one hundred and sixty years, the local public and private stakeholders have developed an internationally recognised expertise and built an infrastructure to supply, treat and distribute water, among the most effective in the world. Our institutions also learnt a long time ago how to manage this precious resource consensually, making our region a famous pole of excellence, where laboratories and businesses at the service of sustainable development flourish.
In this context, what could be more legitimate for our region than to host the largest global meeting for water in March 2012? Particularly since this ambition and the requirement have been consolidated with time.
Today, the PACA Regional Council supports local action in sanitation, resources and the management of the aquatic environment, and more particularly dealing with flooding. The Marseille Provence Métropole Urban Community is responsible for water and sanitation in its eighteen municipalities and will open the doors to its installations to conference participants and visitors to the Forum, for them to see their cutting edge quality control and resource protection facilities.
Since 1982, the Bouches du Rhône General Council has been responsible for the development, maintenance and operation of water courses, lakes and other State-owned bodies of water, whilst the City of Marseille manages the problem of rainwater run-off and the Marseille Provence Chamber of Commerce and Industry brings the support of the business world and enhances the competence of French and regional companies in the water domain.
To this range of expertise and the many solutions implemented in Marseille and its region, we have to add the 26 centuries of exchanges with the world and a flawless determination to promote international cooperation. Indeed, the “Provençal water model” can be shared, particularly with our neighbours on the shores of the Mediterranean.
The City of Marseille, which initiated, proposed and defended the candidature of Marseille as host to the 6th World Water Forum, is particularly proud to have been chosen to organise this major event for the future of humanity, alongside France and the World Water Council. It is for this reason that it has been consecrated ”World Water Capital 2012”. Host city to the World Water Council since its creation, Marseille implements an ambitious water policy with an eye on the future and all those who would like to contribute to its cause are welcome to come and join us to share, exchange, listen and debate the best solutions to be put in motion.
Welcome to the Forum of Solutions, in Marseille, in March 2012.
Jean-Claude Gaudin
Mayor of Marseille
Michel Vauzelle
President of the Regional Council Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur
Jean-Noël Guerini
President of the Bouches du Rhône General Council
Eugène Caselli
President of the Marseille Provence Métropole Urban Community
Jacques Pfister
President of the Marseille Provence Chamber of Commerce and Industry
More information: download here <media 390 _blank download>the second announcement</media>
Related page: the "Grassroots & Citizenship" process of the Forum
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