Abstract of a keynote speech at the "Dialogos da Terra no Planeta Agua" (November 26-28, Minas Gerais - Brazil)

Abstract:


The international issue of Water has unquestionably gathered momentum for the last two decades. This reflects the growing awareness that is taking place at a multilarel level of the more and more critical issues that are at stake. However, the resulting « geopolitics of Water » remains quite weak and, above all, formal considering both its effective results and perspectives. We are indeed, at the global scale, very much far from a shared understanding equal to the stakes that Water confronts us with at the beginning of this XX1st century. Promoting a new global Water order requires a real « Copernican Revolution» in the way of conceiving, addressing and introducing as well as promoting all upcoming multilateral Water strategies in the coming decades. This approach should draw inspiration from the successful precedent of the Unesco on the Cultural diversity issue which has profited by an examplary support from the international civil and academic society as well as from many governments around the world. It is an analogous approach that we believe should be promoted in view of the historical issue of the common preservation and fair distribution of water resources. This is all the more relevant as Water and Culture are interrelated in as much as human beings cannot live without both of them together. Finally, the vector for such a project should be the founding and implementing of an authentic Cosmopolitical approach to Water - to which the administrative and geopolitical strategies prevailing today provide no equivalent. The following article presents several and desirable principles of such a cosmopolitical approach to Water.













Translated by Julia Guimier - (Provisional translation)