In a column published Monday on franceinfo, associations and organizations, including Oxfam, ask public authorities and citizens to take the measure of the emergency.
“We have not yet fully measured the extent to which the consequences of the climate change that we are already experiencing today will involve a change of use”warns Monday June 5 on franceinfo Cécile Duflot, director general of Oxfam France, while several environmental associations call in a column published Monday on franceinfo at “urgently rethink our water uses” in the face of global warming. Attac, Greenpeace France, the League of Human Rights, Oxfam, in particular, ask public authorities, elected officials and the government to take legal measures so that everyone has access to water. According to the former housing minister, “The government must be more proactive”.
franceinfo: France has not recovered from the historic drought of last summer?
Cecile Duflot: We all find it difficult to understand that we have entered a different period. Water was considered a very abundant resource from which it was enough to draw, whether for irrigation or for industry. Now we know that we have to change the way we look at water. It is a common good that is threatened by climate change today. If the water tables do not recharge with water, then you will not be able to consume in the same way as you did before.
“The situation is already very difficult in a number of territories, but even the rains of early spring, which had seemed to save the situation in the north of France, were not enough. We are already in a situation where we finds significant drought rates in the soils.
Cécile Duflot, Director General of Oxfam Franceat franceinfo
The government’s water plan with 53 measures is not enough?
No, because I think that the question is that of scale, and in particular the fact that it must be said that a certain number of uses which were almost banal, because we had water in abundance, it will have to be given up. This is what we have not yet properly measured, it is to what extent the consequences of climate change that we are already experiencing today, that the countries of the South are already experiencing enormously, but that we too are beginning to live, will involve a change of use and in particular a change in the agricultural sector which is 50% the one that consumes the most water in France.
You point to golf courses and hotels with swimming pools or spas. We will have to choose between certain activities and tap water?
When you have no more water at the tap, but the golf courses can continue to water, you feel that this generates tension. Moreover, this is what is happening in Spain, which is experiencing a very significant moment of drought. There are beginning to be conflicts, including physical ones, with the destruction of illegal agricultural wells. Maybe we need to change the plants that are used on the golf courses.
The goal is not to say that golf is bad, it’s to say, we have to adapt to a drop in our water resources. We will also have to adapt to times when it rains extremely violently. That’s what we have to understand, it’s that our climate is changing and it’s going to be very complicated.
Can we trust the different sectors to adapt their uses or should the rules be tightened immediately?
It is clear that a number of elected officials, in certain areas where consumption restrictions must be enforced, have difficulty with certain individuals or families who consider that they have installed a watering system for their lawn and who want to keep it running and want to fill their pool. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, but it does mean that if the rules are firm and apply to everyone, they’re much easier to follow.
It’s the same with saving energy. When you say that you have to unplug your box, but you have in front of you an advertisement on a screen, the question of exemplarity and justice is essential to deal with this question. If you tell people ‘don’t take any more baths’, for example, but you leave the golf courses watered or you leave gigantic swimming pools where the water evaporates because they are outside, for the benefit of a few, it does not work. They say it’s unfair. The government needs to be more proactive.