¡EVERYONE IN MEXICO CITY ON 18 MARCH 2006

FOR BETTER BASIN MANAGEMENT!

The 4 th World Water Forum will take place in Mexico City from 16 to 22 March 2006 at the invitation of the Mexican Government and the World Water Council.

It is a major meeting not to be missed.

INBO calls its members and observers to get mobilized and come to Mexico City to present their experiences, to exchange and discuss in order to develop and improve basin management over the world.

What progress has been made since the 1990s!

Management at the level of basins of rivers, lakes or aquifers experienced a quick development in many countries which made it the basis of their national legislation on water or experimented it in pilot basins.

The European Water Framework Directive of 2000 sets an objective of good ecological status in the national or international river basin districts of the 25 current Member States and the Countries applying for accession to the European Union.

Lastly, the management of the transboundary basins of the 263 rivers and hundreds of aquifers is taken more and more into account within commissions, « Authorities » or international « organizations ».

The Forum of Mexico City will be for us the occasion to give a report on these progresses, but also on the difficulties which remain and the way still to go.

The Forum Secretariat agreed to accept four session proposals submitted by INBO, its Regional Networks for Africa (ANBO) or Europe (EURO-INBO) and their partners, for the day of 18 March 2006, devoted to Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM):

■ management of African transboundary basins (AMCOW/ANBO)

■ implementation of the European Water Framework Directive (EURO-INBO)

■  users’ and public participation and common cause in basin management (INBO)

■   synthesis of the progress made in transbounday basin management over the world (TINBO).

These sessions will be jointly organized with UNESCO, Green Cross International, the International Water Secretariat, the Water Academy, the Japan Water Forum, the City of Montreal, the Mekong Commission in particular, and with IW-Learn and several universities or famous research centers.

The International Network of Basin Organizations (INBO) now gathers 153 permanentmembers or observers from 52 countries , as well as the majority of the International Commissions or Transboundary Basin Organizations.

Of course, it is on the topic of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) on the scale of the basins of rivers, lakes and aquifers, that INBO can share the practical experience acquired by its members in the field.

The specificity of the Network is indeed to gather the Governmental and Basin Organizations, which are really in charge of defining and implementing water policy in their respective countries: far from academic speeches, INBO members are directly responsible for water management and have to face the daily realities that it implies and the preparation of the future.

Better than anybody else, they know the stakes and the problems to be solved locally in each basin and commit themselves to carry out the actions they deem necessary, either for applying the regulations, or for mobilizing financial resources and implementing projects or for dialogue and the involvement of users and of all the citizens concerned.

For more than 10 years, they have carried out exchanges between them within INBO to identify and disseminate the most useful and effective approaches, but also to raise the decision-makers’ awareness on the encountered difficulties.

Within the Network, the partners have organized themselves at the regional level, either African, American, Asian, European or Mediterranean, in order to strengthen neighborhood relations and to take into account all the diversities of local and regional situations.

¡ Our ideas are progressing, let’s get mobilized to make our results known in Mexico City!

In order to facilitate the organization of the sessions and of our meetings in Mexico City, it would be very useful if you could send back, at your earliest convenience, the appended registration form to INBO Permanent Technical Secretariat.