Finally, a new approach to water resources issues thanks to China

I have been invited as a researcher, teacher and practitioner of development issues to contribute to this particularly stimulating and important mobilization of the fourteenth national five-year plan for the protection of the national marine ecological environment of the People's Republic of China and I sincerely thank it those who allowed me modestly to contribute to this work.

Within the limits of this post, I would indicate the three axes of intervention (other than technical or technological) appeared to me to be essential to clearly mark the importance of this an eminently consubstantial problem of the very existence of a society. and a human community. It extends beyond both the individual and domestic spheres without being able to be fully transferred to institutions and professional managers.

(1) To further territorialize water issues - (2) a triple effort around the issue of governance and (3) a simplification and harmonization of regulations to allow everyone to better understand how it works, take ownership of the issues and contribute to their sustainability.

These three points in fact mean putting this question of sustainable management of resources and water at the heart of society's challenges and of resisting the temptation to confine them to their only technical and professional management, without neglecting the conscientious involvement of these highly qualified people.

In fact, behavioral changes - which are the basis of a significant mastery of ecological resources and in particular of water - cannot take place over time, without an understanding and appropriation of the challenges, which in this area always show superior to more normative approaches.

This requires education and training (initial and continuous) as well as an association of populations around a key word which also concerns that of public institutions: that of (active) accountability.

It is therefore indeed a paradigm shift in question - and this on a world scale - because the models which prevailed or prevailed until then no longer seem to correspond to the mutations and transformations of the evolution of modes of life and of humanity's relationship to the environment and even less to the effective availability of the planet's ecological resources.

In this, there is a great expectation - and such a great opportunity for China - to propose a new model for the management of ecological resources and it has the means.