Water, the City and Urban Planning L'eau, La Ville Et L'urbanisme
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205.42 98WA Académie <fe l'Eau PROCEEDINGS ACTES SYMPOSIUM WATER, THE CITY AND URBAN PLANNING L'EAU, LA VILLE ET L'URBANISME ;:1p|;::fi.::::.:ô 10-11 April 1997 UNESCO Paris, France INTERNATIONAL HYDROLOGICAL PROGRAMME PROGRAMME HYDROLOGIQUE INTERNATIONAL Water, the city and urban planning L'eau, la ville et l'urbanisme SYMPOSIUM 10 -11 April/avnY 1997 Paris, France PROCEEDINGS / ACTES LIBRARY IRC UKES PO Box 93190, 2509 AD THE HAGUE Tel.: +31 70 30 689 80 Fax: +31 70 35 899 64 BARCODE: i (+. C gO Académie, de l'Eau. UNESCO, Paris, 1998 LO: The designations employed and the presentation of material throughout the publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of UNESCO concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. Les appellations employées dans cette publication et la présentation des données qui y figurent n'impliquent de la part de l'UNE SCO aucune prise de position quant au statut juridique des pays, territoires, villes ou zones, ou de leurs autorités, ni quant au tracé de leurs frontières ou limites. UNDER THE PATRONAGE OF / SOUS LE HAUT PATRONAGE DE Mme Corinne LEPAGE Minister of Environment / Ministre de l'Environnement France Mr Jean-Claude GAUDIN Minister of Town and Country Planning / Ministre de l'Aménagement du Territoire, de la Ville et de l'Intégration France Cover photo / photo de couverte/L. ©Yann Arthus-Bertrand aerial view of Paris, from "Earth from Above" project / UNESCO / Fujifilm vue aérienne de Paris, issue du projet "La Terre vue du Ciel" I UNESCO I Fujifilm SC-98/WS/8 PREFACE M. Andras SZÔLLÔSI-NAGY Director of the Division of Water Sciences, UNESCO Le symposium « l'eau, la ville et l'urbanisme », organisé conjointement par l'Académie de l'Eau et l'UNESCO, a réuni plus de 300 participants dont un tiers venant de plus de 40 pays du monde. Son originalité a été d'être bâti autour de l'expérience de 23 villes décrite dans autant de monographie et rassemblée dans une synthèse explicitant les problèmes communs entre eau et urbanisme. Ce symposium a permis une discussion fructueuse entre experts de l'eau et spécialistes de l'urbanisme, enrichie par les apports d'une vingtaine d'autres villes et de représentants de PHI de 15 pays, autour de 5 grandes problématiques: 1/ Organisation urbaine et concertation des acteurs 2/ La ville et les citadins face au problème de l'eau 3/ Aspects socio-économiques et financiers 4/ L'eau et la planification urbain 5/ Utilisation des techniques disponibles pour l'alimentation en eau, l'assainissement et la maîtrise des inondations. A l'issu des travaux, a été rédigée la « Déclaration de Paris » qui reprend des recommandations exprimées par l'UNESCO lors de réunions précédentes à Rio, Beijing, ... Marrakech en y ajoutant celles du Symposium sur la nécessaire concertation entre eau et urbanisme et son extension à l'extérieur des limites urbaines. Enfin, cette Déclaration préconise la création d'un réseau de villes, dans le cadre d'un charte, pour promouvoir les échanges entre villes et en faire bénéficier les villes du monde autour d'un concept de développement durable. M. Andras SZÔLLÔSI-NAGY, Directeur de la Division des Sciences de l'Eau, UNESCO M. he symposium "Water, the City and Urban Planning", jointly organized by the Académie de l'Eau and UNESCO, assembled more than 300 participants in Paris on 10 and 11 April of this year. It was the first time that experts from the field of water and urban development had met to exchange their experiences. On this occasion over 40 countries, including Japan, India, China, the United Kingdom and Croatia, compared their visions of an issue which is going to become of concern to more and more of the earth's inhabitants because, as the earth summit Habitat II (Istanbul, June 1996) emphasized, the great majority of the world's population in the third millenium will be city-dwellers. The 42 cities represented, like the 23 about which the Académie de l'Eau had prepared monographs for the symposium, were very varied in terms of geographical and climatalogical conditions, water resources, population density, administrative organization, management methods, growth rates and levels of socio- ecomomic development. The water and planning problems that they face are therefore very different. In order to understand these issues more clearly, five main areas of discussion were defined. 1 Urban organization and dialogue between the various sectors 2 Water, the city and its people 3 Socio-economic and financial aspects 4 Water and urban planning 5 Use of techniques for water supply, sanitation and flood control. These five themes corresponded to the chapters in the summary of the 23 monographs. The speeches given from the platform by representatives of the urban centres and the debates involving all participants, notably the IHP representatives from some fifteen countries,enriched the flow of ideas. The Paris Statement was drawn up and adopted The recommendations made at the symposium and discussed during the different sessions were included in the Paris Statement. This text, which includes the recommendations made by the IHPs during earlier meetings organized by UNESCO in Rio, Beijing and elsewhere explicitly includes all the new recommendations, notably those stressing the necessity for co-operation between water and urban planning and the proposal to create an international network of cities dealing in particular with sustainable development. Upon submission to the participants, it was adopted with two amendments. The project for an international network of cities was launched During the symposium, the cities and other bodies present considered that it would be useful to pursue the fruitful dialogue begun before and during the symposium and to put their experience at the disposal of other cities in the world. To this end, they decided to examine the possibility of forming a network. They gave their agreement to a working group composed of the Académie de l'Eau, the French IHP/UNESCO committee and several participating cities to study the means of setting up an international network of cities based on the draft Charter hereafter. PARIS STATEMENT (version française p 168) The Symposium on Water, the City and Urban Planning, held in Paris on 10-11 April 1997 with 300 participants from over 50 countries, having considered the importance and urgency of addressing water and sanitation problems of the world's cities in a forceful and operational way and building upon the findings of previous international conferences, including the Dublin Statement (1992), Agenda 21 of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Rio, 1992), the Beijing Declaration (1996) and the Habitat-Il Agenda (1996), and in the spirit of the First World Water Forum (Marrakesh, 1997), urges the international community, authorities, local groups and citizens to adopt the guidelines, measures and recommendations found below. Whereas: The marked process of urbanization in most countries and especially in the developing world is causing exponentially increasing pressures on the available water resources that is reaching critical proportions. The sanitary and ecological problems arising from the human concentrations and disposal of waste from urban agglomerations pose formidable challenges. The attainment of effective water management strategies to achieve a sustainable urban development and in some cases just to ensure the long-term survival of cities, threatens to become an elusive goal and calls out for our attention; Water related problems in cities touch upon ail elements of the water cycle: water, land, air, and energy; that is, they are associated with all human activities. Furthermore, the social, cultural, political, institutional, and economic aspects are integral, even dominant components of water management issues and cannot be set aside when designing solutions to existing problems, particularly when dealing with questions of equity and sustainability. The nature of water as an endowment and economic good, and as a basic necessity not to be denied to any sector of society is a duality which must be faced with wisdom and compassion; An integrated approach is necessary with regard to environmental and water management. Urban planning and its connected water aspects should encompass integration from the physical standpoint beyond the city limits, considering both the river basin where it is located and the surrounding region affected by and interacting with the city; and from the multi-sectorial standpoint. All relevant sectors must be functionally and meaningfully involved in this process including education, agriculture, finance, energy, among others. The presence of a responsive population with proper mechanisms to participate in decision-making at local and higher levels is essential for effective results; Each city has a set of particular conditions and problems which precludes the automatic application of imported solutions. Nevertheless, a wealth of experience and information has been accumulated by different cities over the world in facing various types of urban water problems which deserve to be studied and snared in order to learn how they may benefit other cities. Recognizing that it is pressing to act on: The implementation of demand management measures tending to decrease the total water demand and to give priority to higher value uses, given the rising pressures on available water resources today. A wise water pricing