This summer's news about the increase in extreme events such as floods, storms and fires, as well as the results of the 6th IPCC report recently published, show that all French territories are and will increasingly be impacted by climate change. Water, the nation's common heritage, is essential for many uses and is managed in France in an integrated way. Climate change modifies the stakes of water management, leading to a potential decrease in summer river flows and therefore in aquifer levels, and also influencing water quality and aquatic ecosystems. The actors of water management in France must develop strategies for adaptation to the observed and future climate change.
The “LIFE Eau&Climat” project aims to help local water management stakeholders, in particular within the framework of Schéma d’aménagement et de Gestion de Eaux (SAGE), to assess the effects of climate change, to take them into account in their planning and to implement adaptation measures.
Started in September 2020, the 4-year project has progressed well despite the current health situation and it is time for the 14 partners to meet to review this first year. The International Office for Water, which coordinates this project, organizes a general assembly on September 15 and 16, 2021, which will be held in Limoges, at the Hôtel de la Région Nouvelle Aquitaine.
A general assembly in Limoges, on September 15 and 16, 2021 gathering about thirty scientists and managers and a meeting of the institutional working group.
This general assembly will be introduced by a representative of the New Aquitaine Region and Mr. Stéphane LORIOT, director of the EPTB Vienne which is also a partner of the project. Adaptation to climate change is a key issue in water resources management for our territory and more broadly for the region, which is moreover a member of an Institutional Working Group that follows the progress of the project and is composed of all French authorities involved in water management: Ministry of Ecological Transition, Ministry of Agriculture of Food, French Office of Biodiversity (OFB), New Aquitaine Chamber of Agriculture, Water Agencies, ADEME, New Aquitaine Region and some ultra-marine Water Offices.
At the end of a day and a half of work meeting which will bring together about thirty people, a hybrid meeting (face-to-face in Limoges and by videoconference) will take place on Thursday 16 afternoon with the institutional working group. The objective is to explain to them the progress made as well as the tools developed during this first year and to ensure that the work done is in line with regional and national water management policies.
Two tools for diagnosing vulnerability and defining local adaptation plans, a dedicated homepage for retrieving hydro-climatic datas
Many actions are planned within the framework of the project around the training of actors and their mobilization, access to hydroclimatic datas or the conditions of realization of modelling at the local scale which cannot be the same as at the regional or national scales.
During this first year, two tools have been developed by the partner Acterra to allow the SAGE structures to diagnose the vulnerability of their territories to the impacts of climate change and to define, in a concerted manner with all the stakeholders, specific adaptation plans for the issues specific to each territory. These two tools will be tested in 2022 by several territorial partners and a final version will be produced in early 2023.
The partner Météo-France has developed the first version of the DRIAS-Eau portal, based on the existing DRIAS portal (http://www.drias-climat.fr/) dedicated to climate data, in order to facilitate access to hydrological data that are essential to the knowledge of current and future impacts of climate change and therefore essential to the decision-making of managers.