Climate Change Influence on a Water Policy--Why a Water Policy should be Coping with a Possible Climate Change

摘要

In this day and age, climate change is a concern shared by many. Its impact on water management is certain and worrying. Even though we do not know how to foresee with certainty the exact nature of the steps to be taken, it is possible to already initiate a reorientation in the water management policy. The Rhone-Mediterranean and Corsica River Basin Agency has already taken several measures to face that effect and is introducing this requirement in its intervention programs. These measures deal equally with a prediction of the scarcity of the resource and a forecast of extraordinary floods. In order to face scarcity, measures towards the security of water supplies call for widespread water transfers and their interconnection, the reduction of waste, and the improvement of the performance of equipment, with regard to irrigation in particular. As regards the fight against floods, the task is more modest at this stage, since the objective is to combine spatial planning (land occupation ), existing urbanization, and the optimized management of drainage flows. The provision of areas allowing rising river flow to expand is a concept enjoying a strong development. Prospective research needs to be encouraged in these different fields.