International. Iwater, Fira de Barcelona's new exhibition on the integral water cycle, will include among its core activities the Iwater Forum, a space for conferences and debate in which some 80 national and international experts will participate.
The objective is to address the keys that are already being defined and that will mark the future management of water in areas with high water stress such as Mediterranean countries. The sessions will revolve around three axes: resilience, governance and the financing of this basic resource and its infrastructures. These three axes contribute to concretize and vindicate the real value of water and its impact on the economy and the development of society.
In the opinion of Ángel Simón, president of Iwater and executive vice president of SUEZ in charge of Water Europe, this forum 'will be an unavoidable meeting point for all the agents involved in the sector and will be a focus of opportunities to boost it and boost its growth'. Likewise, 'it will be the ideal space to claim the concept of the real value of water, as a basic element for the functioning of society and an essential economic actor for sustainable growth', says Simón.
Among the names confirmed at the Iwater Forum is the American scientist Peter Gleick, an expert in environmental sciences with special attention to freshwater challenges worldwide, researcher and co-founder of the Pacific Institute in Oakland, California, USA. It is also worth mentioning the attendance of other experts such as the former head of the Superintendency of Health Services of the Government of Chile, Magaly Espinosa; the deputy director for Europe and the Middle East of the Rockefeller Foundation's 100 Resilient Cities project, Konstantina Karidy; the Director of Environment of the OECD, Xavier Leflaive, and the head of the Global Water Operators Partnerships Alliance (GWOPA) of the UN Habitat program of the United Nations, Faraj El-Awar.
When explaining the axes of the Iwater Forum, the scientific coordinator of the program and president of the European Water Technology Platform, Tomas Michel, defends 'resilience in water infrastructures and in all areas of management, as essential to ensure their future availability and access for the entire population'. Michel assures that for this 'more inclusive governance systems are required, which take into account the integral water cycle in its entirety, but which are based on new financing approaches'.
Different studies indicate that the increase in population will lead to a water deficit of 40% in 2030. This forecast, added to the effects of climate change, forces us to look for formulas that modify the forms of consumption and encourage reuse to combat this shortage. In this sense, several Iwater presentations will focus on the ability to overcome the water deficit in cities, agriculture and industry, the three areas that consume this resource the most.
According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 40% of the world's population lives in areas of water stress. To guarantee the supply of water in sufficient quantity and quality, it will be essential to coordinate the different actors involved. To this end, the Iwater Forum will contrast systems with a clear predominance of private management, as is the case of Chile, with mostly public management systems, and that of Denmark, and the model currently in force in Spain, of a mixed nature, will be analyzed. The issue of regulation will also be addressed, with examples such as the United Kingdom, Portugal and Italy, which opt for a single central regulator model, as opposed to the model of marked local character of our country.
Finally, the debate in Iwater will also focus on how to propose new financing formulas to cover both the renovation of obsolete infrastructures and the construction of new infrastructures. Thus, the possibilities of public-private investment and the diversity of financing proposals applied in infrastructures in other parts of the world with a water situation similar to Spain will be presented, through the vision of institutions such as the OECD, the European Investment Bank (EIB), or the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF).
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