This project approved by the World Water Forum takes its place in the very concrete objective of a search for solutions in favor of water and the 12 priorities of the Forum.
Martine Vassal, president of the 6th World Water Forum Roots and Citizenship Process; Christèle Pernet, president of the non-profit organisation Wells of the Desert; Jacques Tcheng, director of Water of Grenoble; Mohamed Ixa, president of the NGO Tidene, Niger; Claudine Chilinski, 6th World Water Forum Communication Director.
“This project responds precisely to the criteria of the 6th World Water Forum by providing concrete solutions. The initiative of providing access to water to the desert populations means giving access to life, as everywhere, in the face of financing problems,” declared Martine Vassal, Chair of the Commission “Roots and Citizenship” of the 6th World Water Forum, Deputy Mayor of Marseille. “We have dual goal: both to help them and raise awareness in our own populations of a civic and respectful attitude. In Marseille, we have, for example a 20 day reserve of water behind us in case of drought, while in this desert region children walk kilometers every day to fetch water instead of going to school,” Martine Vassal continued at the kick-off meeting of the Local and Regional Authority process of the 6th World Water Forum, on 31 May in Lyon.
The local commission “Roots and Citizenship” is giving its official backing to 34 civic events or projects by means of a ‘6th World Water Forum Approved’ label. Created to ensure that the work of the Forum was well rooted in local realities and to develop the citizens’ contributions in favor of water, this Commission – under the impetus of its Chair, Martine Vassal, and Vice-Chair, Hachmi Kennou – has approved 34 candidatures out of more than 120 applications studied to date by the Commission.
These projects should respond to the spirit of the 6th Forum, that is more especially the search for and promotion of solutions at the service of water, and events which, with limited means, will be able to mobilize the greatest number of people possible.
“Aman Iman !”: the Touaregs say “Water is life”
“The survival of the nomadic Touareg populations of the Air Mountains, in the Ténéré desert is intimately linked to the crucial question of access to water” for Christel Pernet, Chair of the NGO, Les Puits du Désert (The Wells of the Desert) which is fighting against the risk of the disappearance of this nomadic people. “We need 400 wells so as to:
- - provide water to the nomadic or sedentary populations of the villages in the region, which is 1.5 times the size of France,
- - irrigate areas of fallow land to enable the Touaregs who have lost their cattle due to successive droughts since 1973, to create market gardens and
- - for the les nomads who depend totally on the water points, with concreted pastoral wells with curb-stones which resist sanding up and desert storms.”
reports Mohamed Ixa, Touareg Chair of the Niger association Tidène, at the kick-off meeting of the Local and Regional Authority process of the 6eme World Water Forum, on 31 May in Lyon.
For more information: www.lespuitsdudesert-tidene.org
Show our solidarity towards a people in danger
“Michel Destot, the Mayor of Grenoble and Chair of the AMGVF and myself wanted to finance a well in 2009 but when we discovered precisely what the needs were, we sought other solutions”, explained Jacques Tcheng, Managing Director of the Grenoble Water Department. Rooted in a global and multi-partner approach, the project A City, A Well was born. The Water Agency responded present immediately and made the commitment to finance as many wells as the cities.
Result: 20 wells, adapted to Touareg uses and traditions, will be delivered before and after the 6th World Water Forum. Wells, which are still insufficient in number, but whose aim is to enable an ancestral people to continue to wander freely in the Ténéré desert.
“This operation provides a solution to water stress, responds to the Millenium Goals and illustrates real international solidarity”.
Since the so-called Oudin law of 27 January 2010, French local authorities may devote up to 1 % of the miscellaneous budget of their water and sanitation departments to actions of decentralized cooperation, emergency aid or solidarity for water and sanitation. The extension of this exemplary achievement is today proposed to all the Cities in France.Why not further afield?
You would like to participate in the operation “A City, a Well”?
Contact Christel Pernet on 0033 (0)6 98 48 74 74
courrier@lespuitsdudesert-tidene.org
