“The result of this first meeting in preparation of the local and regional authority process is positive, both as concerns the number of participants, the quality of the work carried out and the advances made.

Firstly, we were more than 300 participants to meet together in Lyon, councillors and representatives from the local authorities, with 95 coming from some 30 countries. One of our objectives for the next forum in Marseille is in fact to continue to mobilize successfully the local authorities. Out of 25,000 participants at the last forum (link), 250 came fom local or regional authorities, that is 1%. We should like to see this figure increase.

Then, in terms of exchanges, here we were witnesses to very active, very engaged participation from local players especially with regard to the Istanbul Consensus (link). Furthermore, sixty or so new cities announced their commitment by signing the Istanbul Water Consensus, and a good many more went off with our dossier (link) under the arm to present it to their municipal or regional council.

As far as our route map towards the 6th Forum in 2012 in Marseille is concerned, the 5 workshops were involved in fruitful discussions and the main outcome of these sessions  (link new article ‘Outcome’) is the request  from local players for recognition for water - and more precisely: the request for the States to adopt legislation decentralizing this competence to local and regional authorities including the financial means necessary to fulfill this responsibility. The second point to come out of these discussions concerns partnerships, with the proposal made during one session to create an international club of the signatories to the Water Consensus.

The next stage now is to set up the « CITY TASK FORCE », a permanent working party harnessed closely to the schedule of the route map, which brings together the technicians from the Champion Cities (link ?) the likes of Lyon (France), Rio (Brazil)… The mandate of this CITY TASK FORCE is to enrich this route map by taking account of the work carried out in Lyon, to work on the articulation of the local and regional authority process with the other processes, to define the operational objectives and make specific proposals for solutions – these solutions may be institutional, legal, technical or educational for raising the awareness of the populations.”