Issues, stakeholders, regulation, and challenges in water management

Water is at the heart of multiple and conflicting issues, visions, and interests. The articulation of these different elements raises the question of integrated water resources management (IWRM) and regulation (particularly through public policy), the balance between collective and private values, and decision-making processes concerning collective issues—in short, governance. Decentralization, water and sanitation services, basin management, the European Framework Directive, and financial circuits illustrate, in particular, different facets of governance.

This module should enable students, regardless of their background and previous specialization, to understand the complexity of water-related issues and the multiplicity of stakeholders, as well as the difficulties posed by regulation, due to both this multiplicity and the fluid nature of water and the interaction between scales that it generates. This introduction to the issues and stakeholders should make students aware that, regardless of the 'water profession'—technical or more institutional—they choose, they will be faced with the need to understand the roles of the various stakeholders and their different interests.

Hourly volumes:

            CM: 24

            TD: 3

            TP:  

            Land:

Continuous assessment

Introduction to integrated water management and governance, F. Molle

This course introduces IWRM and the three collective values it promotes through a historical retrospective of the 'hydraulic mission' and the emergence of three 'challenges'. It shows the interconnectivity of users and ecosystems, the variety of externalities produced and propagated through the hydrological cycle, and the necessity and complexity of coordination or regulation. A role-playing game on water allocation during periods of deficit between different types of farmers in a small irrigated system illustrates the diversity of criteria/values/mechanisms that can be considered to manage the scarcity of the resource.

The module introduces the three archetypes of coordination (state, market, community) and the issue of governance through a critical review of the various definitions found in the literature, detailing in particular what falls within the remit of the state and what does not. The case of Mekong River basin management is used to illustrate the nature of decision-making processes and the links between governance and power distribution at different levels.

Water industry players and financial circuits in France, S. Richard

Based on a fictional case inspired by real experiences, this course focuses on French institutions and actors in the water sector, their actions and interactions, their areas of expertise, and the financial channels they use. It aims to provide students with a general knowledge and understanding of the institutional complexity and multiplicity of water actors in France.

Organizational structures and management principles for drinking water and sanitation services C. Lejars

 This course focuses on the small water cycle. It presents the actors involved in the small water cycle and introduces the principles of drinking water and sanitation service management. Through the history of water services in France, it emphasizes the concepts of service delegation and intermunicipal cooperation. It analyzes the major developments in the organization and management of these services in France.

Water management put to the test by the WFD and decentralization, S. Ghiotti

This course is structured in two parts. I) The implementation of the 2000 Water Framework Directive (WFD) is based on a number of texts and documents that ensure its "translation" and application within EU member states. For France, the SDAGE, the Action Program, and the management plan are examples of this, and their content, objectives, and methods of development by what are known as water stakeholders will be analyzed. Putting the French case into perspective with other European examples will help to understand the diversity of situations and responses to achieve "good ecological status" for water bodies. II) The WFD and other European directives that have since been published (floods, groundwater, sea, etc.) have profoundly changed water management and governance in France. Their implementation has been accompanied by the transfer of powers from the State to local authorities, which has accelerated in France over the last ten years. This decentralization concerns infrastructure, new powers, and new obligations. Three areas are particularly affected: territorial policies (SAGE and river contracts), the role of inter-municipal bodies in managing the large water cycle, and the long-standing regional development companies focused on irrigation issues. Particular emphasis will be placed on the terms and conditions for the transfer and management of these "tools," the social and spatial issues associated with them, and the restructuring of the networks of actors involved. Taking the example of the regional level, this second part of the course will be based on the viewing of a film and the reading of short articles from the specialized press. These will enable students to clearly identify the actors, issues, problems, scales, and projects proposed to achieve the quantitative and qualitative objectives, which are real challenges for local territories.

'Closure' and governance of watersheds, F. Molle

The joint overexploitation of surface water and groundwater leads to a process of 'closure', where runoff is no longer sufficient (at least for part of the year) to meet needs, particularly environmental needs, and where aquifers are exploited well beyond their 'safe yield'. This phenomenon is universal and therefore of great importance: this course aims to understand both its causes (the political reasons why societies systematically overexploit their resources) and its consequences. Numerous examples illustrate the difficulties of managing a system that tends towards a zero-sum game and whose users are in direct competition with each other. In particular, it shows the limitations, and even the negative impacts, of conventional technical solutions such as micro-irrigation or wastewater reuse.