Transférer l’eau du Rhône dans le Languedoc : regard critique sur les incidences du projet Aqua Domitia et les contradictions territoriales
Integrated water resources management (IWRM) is a concept that has been developed over 20 years to change public water policies and water users’ practices in well-defined territories. This article shows the contradictions in the application of IWRM principles in the establishment of an inter-basin t...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Université Lille 1
2015-03-01
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| Series: | Territoire en Mouvement |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/tem/2778 |
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| Summary: | Integrated water resources management (IWRM) is a concept that has been developed over 20 years to change public water policies and water users’ practices in well-defined territories. This article shows the contradictions in the application of IWRM principles in the establishment of an inter-basin transfer of water to the South of France. From September to December 2011, the National Commission for public debate organized in the region Languedoc, a long process of discussion on the project of transfer of water from the River Rhone to the surroundings of the city of Narbonne (http://debatpublic-aquadomitia.org/).In this still exceptional process in France, what appeared initially as a simple validation of techno-economic choices of water transfer modality became the theatre of the more nuanced positions of actors. The emergence of alternatives results in a balance between the arguments of the proponents of the industrial transfer of water from the Rhone and the arguments of the detractors asking that all other alternatives have to be studied as well as the studies of the project Aqua Domitia.We present first the historical context of the Languedoc water projects. Aqua Domitia is the product of a story of planners and engineers as well as a story of the political visions of the regional territory. Then, we will examine how the project will greatly contrary to the principles of collaborative watershed management. The logic of the transfer fades the upstream-downstream solidarity on all of the issues of water: the distribution at the time of low water, the flood management in regular years, the adaptions in exceptionally unusual years by drought or floods. Several alternatives exist but that they were downgraded, discarded in favour of a single vision. |
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| ISSN: | 1950-5698 |