Annual General Assembly of the Académie de l’Eau, 6 December 2013

The annual General Assembly of the Académie de l’Eau (www.academie-eau.org) was held in Paris on 6 December 2013. AIDA’s Honorary Chairman, Dominique Alhéritière, attended the event (he was recently admitted at the Académie).

It has now become a tradition that the annual General Assembly is followed by a Conference/lecture and a questions and answers (Q&A) session. This year the theme was “Decentralized transfrontier cooperation on water issues”. An interesting presentation of the cooperation between Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands was made.

Ms Léna Salamé, Member of AIDA’s Executive Council, lectured on UNESCO’s experience in water. Her conference was very well received. During the Q&A session Léna Salamé,and Dominique Alhéritière ganged up to dispel the mediatically correct fear for water wars. They explained at length that through proper management techniques and rational measures for sustainable development there were no reasons for water wars to happen. Should water wars occur, it could only be the result of irresponsible leaders and politicians banking on water issues to push a nationalistic agenda and divert public attention from internal problems they are unable to tackle.

Not only Ms Léna Salamé clearly disclosed her appurtenance to AIDA (so did Mr Dominique Alhéritière), but when the newly elected President of the Académie regretted the total lack of gender balance on the Académie’s Administrative Council, Ms Salamé referred to AIDA as a model, having reached a perfect gender balance on its Executive Council !