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Recensement des actions de stockage de l’eau en amont des bassins hydrographiques<br />
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY<br />
1. Global water issue<br />
The last decades, water resources on the planet have decreased in an uninterrupted<br />
way, considering the quality and quantity parameters. It’s becoming harder today to<br />
meet everyone’s needs in fresh water. Among the 35 millions km 3 of fresh water in the<br />
world, only 1% is located in the lakes, rivers and the various wetlands. Moreover, fresh<br />
water isn’t equally geographically distributed through the different regions of the<br />
globe.<br />
The lack of fresh water resources is a fatality for many living beings and ecosystems<br />
worldwide. Water management is now essential considering the crucial role of water in<br />
human survival. However, lack of water isn’t the only issue to manage as even in<br />
tempered regions, issues linked to water management occur periodically.<br />
In our countries, more and more flood-connected problems arise during strong rainfalls<br />
which lead some rivers to reach the point of saturation. This surplus water typically<br />
causes the floods. Most water evacuation developments only put off the problem<br />
downstream. In summer, it’s the issues linked to low water levels that occur. Even<br />
though less spectacular and little highlighted in the news, those are not less<br />
problematic.<br />
It should also be noted that hydrographical basins feature areas with particularly good<br />
water retention capacities. Nevertheless, due to a modified soil usage and to an<br />
intensive exploitation of wetlands (peat bogs drainage), this absorption role has nearly<br />
disappeared in most of the hydrographical basins.<br />
Most of present policies and general opinion still tend to think that the measures to be<br />
taken should aim at evacuating fresh water downstream as fast as possible. Rivers have<br />
often been conversed, canalized, enlarged and diverted, thus increasing population and<br />
goods vulnerability. Policies delay starting to concretize sustainable projects. Not such<br />
a long time ago, many dykes have been developed in the Netherlands or raised in<br />
Flanders. Rivers beds have been enlarged and deepened (The Netherlands and<br />
Wallonia) and meanders have been eliminated in Wallonia.<br />
2. Objectives and framework of this work<br />
The aim of this training course, in the Fresh Water Unit of the World Wide Fund for<br />
Nature (<strong>WWF</strong>), is to produce an experiments collection document about fresh water<br />
management. It will provide detailed information over fresh water conservation and<br />
management actions conducted by environmental and ecological organisations. The<br />
objective is to make local politicians, eco-councillors, farmers and managers become<br />
conscious of the existence of examples of actions in the field of storage at source, and<br />
of the possibilities to implement those at a local level (on catchment areas, near rivers<br />
and in wetlands).<br />
For a few years, the <strong>WWF</strong> is searching solutions that could be alternative and<br />
complement existing downstream facilities (alluvial plains restoration, rivers<br />
recovery…). The storage at source concept has been generalized by the <strong>WWF</strong> in<br />
collaboration with a consultance agency (the Ark Foundation) through a work entitled<br />
“Storage at source, less floods during high water periods; more water during drought<br />
periods” (Overmars & al., 2003). The <strong>WWF</strong> has allowed Natagora, the RNOB/BNVS<br />
and the Ark Foundation to introduce water retention increase measures in the<br />
RNOB/BVNS nature reserve in the East of <strong>Belgium</strong>.<br />
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