May 31^st Press Release English   Español   Portuges

On 30 and 31 May 2011, the Marseille International Forum Committee, in partnership with the Lyon Urban Committee and the Rhone Mediterranean and Corsica Water Agency, hosted the kick off meeting of the local and regional authority process of the 6th World Water Forum. Two hundred and fifty elected representatives and experts participated at this meeting.

A real space for work and exchanges, this meeting, organized in collaboration with the local elected representatives’ networks (CGLU, ICLEI, AIMF, CUF, etc.), provided an occasion to hear testimonies and good practices and above all the presentation of solutions.

These elected representatives have defined their priority strategic goal in view of the Forum of 2012: make States recognize their fundamental role to provide access to water and sanitation and in the management of water resources.

Four actions were chosen to reach this goal:

• Ask States to adopt legislation to decentralize this competence to local and regional authorities including the financial means to assure this responsibility,
• Create a club of local and regional authorities (ALR) signatories to the Consensus of Istanbul so as to mobilize the greatest possible number of elected representatives to make commitments with figures for water and sanitation,
• Reinforce international cooperation between the ALRs to exchange good practices and introduce innovative financing mechanisms,
• Associate the populations and all the territorial players with the different projects linked to water and sanitation.

“The International Forum Commission is charged by the local and regional authorities to defend this priority goal with their States. It is to ensure that the final Ministerial declaration in March 2012 recognizes their role” declared Serge Lepeltier, French Ambassador in charge of the negotiations on climate change and Chair of this Commission.

This meeting provided a new impetus to this process. Sixty or so new local or regional authorities announced their commitment by signing the Istanbul Water Consensus.

Organized jointly by the French State, the World Water Council and Marseille, the 6^th World Water Forum which is to take place from 12 to 17 March 2012 in Marseille will be the “Forum of Solutions”. The four preparatory processes of this Forum (political, regional, thematic and local) coordinate their activities to prepare and facilitate the implementation of beneficial solutions for the identified priority actions.

To organize interviews, obtain photos and reports of proposals emanating from the workshops, please contact:
Aurore Sun: +33 (6) 19 80 42 67 // a.sun@worldwaterforum6.org
Claudine Chilinski : +33 (0)6 38 13 16 51 // c.chilinski@worldwaterforum6.org

+ Videos of the speeches here
+ Photos here
+ Interviews of the experts and elected representatives here