Emmanuel Macron on Thursday set a target of “10% water savings” for all sectors by 2030. Will this be enough?
It is in my opinion the big failure of this body of water. During the Assises de l’eau in 2019, the government of the same Emmanuel Macron had committed to a 10% drop in water withdrawals by 2025 (and 25% by 2034, Ed), an objective that was not met. We are therefore in the process of regressing in relation to these ambitions…
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What do you think of the other measures?
The increase in funding allocated to water agencies, part of the budget of which had
been hijacked since 2017, seems interesting to me. They have a central role in the quantitative and qualitative management of the resource, it is a major player in our system. This should be accompanied by an increase in its staff, as well as those of the French Office for Biodiversity (OFB) which, through its water police missions, monitors compliance with the measures adopted.
Basins, waste water, progressive pricing… Macron’s announcements for his “sobriety plan” on water
The other positive point of this plan is the annual 180 million euros that will be allocated to reducing losses in drinking water networks. Nationally, these losses are estimated at 20%. Tracking leaks is very expensive: even if any subsidy is good to take, the sum is in my opinion largely insufficient.
Third positive point: the generalization of the progressive pricing of the price of water. It is still necessary to define the right threshold and be careful not to weaken the economic balance of the state controls. In cities, many homes are not equipped with individual water meters and its inhabitants therefore cannot monitor their consumption. This implies an additional investment which, to my knowledge, has not been accounted for.
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What I don’t understand is that this progressive pricing would only apply to individuals. Farmers and industrialists escape it when they are the biggest
water consumers in the country.
Agriculture will be able to continue to withdraw as much water. Minister Marc Fesneau spoke of a “sobriety per hectare” : agriculture will have to use less quantity of water per hectare to compensate for the increase in irrigated areas… Does this seem sufficient to you?
No. I do not believe for a second that by letting farmers irrigate larger areas, their total water consumption will remain stable. And I do not see why farmers would escape an effort of sobriety which concerns everyone. This is the continuity of the logic that has prevailed over the past fifty years: farmers are considered to be priority users. While there is no reason to focus more on agriculture rather than electricity production or drinking water. Especially since farmers need energy to produce and, like other users, they also need drinking water.
In France, irrigated areas fell slightly from 2000 to 2010, but increased by 15% between 2010 and 2020. If irrigation practices, which aim to reduce soil dryness, are allowed to develop further, this will lead to a decrease in the quantity of water in the water tables and the flow rates of the rivers, therefore increasing the so-called hydrological droughts. There is a total blind spot on the decrease in water consumption of the agricultural system. While it is possible to produce food with less water.
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Water prices: should large consumers pay more?
For you, the “mega-basins”, like that of Sainte-Soline, in Deux-Sèvres, are an example of poor adaptation to climate change. For what ?
Remember that these are works that are built where there is already excessive pumping in the water tables, to the point of sometimes greatly reducing the flow in the waterways. They are said to be substitution reservoirs because it involves replacing part of the pumping in summer with pumping in winter, when the resource is more abundant, which requires storing water on the surface to use it in the summer.
Lowering samples during the hot season is a good thing. But is it harmless to take water from groundwater in winter? You have to think on a case-by-case basis. In Deux-Sèvres, the Bureau of Geological and Mining Research (BRGM) has shown that groundwater levels tend to drop in winter to the point of being able to call into question the possibility of filling. Their study was carried out based on the 2000-2010 climate, without taking global warming into account, so that it cannot be considered a real impact study.
The basins are not necessarily all bad, but the impact studies are not done well enough. The Council of State has also recently confirmed the prohibition of several basins in Charente-Maritime for “insufficiencies”. Spain has built many artificial water reservoirs to supply agriculture. Today we see the negative consequences of this overdevelopment. As long as there is water, the system works. But with the increasingly frequent droughts, the reservoirs are empty. It is not enough to have the container to guarantee access to water. Rather, it requires a decrease in demand.
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At Sainte-Soline, chronicle of an announced war
Is the intensive agriculture model compatible with a decrease in the resource?
No, he is not. Agriculture must become leaner. This calls into question certain crops, such as corn, which are very water-intensive in July and August, when it runs out. With climate change, maize will therefore not be viable everywhere. It is mainly dedicated to export and livestock feed. If we reduce the share of livestock in the agricultural structure, we reduce at the same time its water needs.
It is not a question of prohibiting agricultural irrigation, we need it. But we must be able to irrigate better and not make farmers more vulnerable to droughts than they already are. It is necessary to rationalize irrigation to think about the shortage by improving its efficiency, avoiding irrigation by dispersion or in full sun… It is also necessary that the water is shared equitably between all the farmers. Basins are generally built for the benefit of a handful of farmers, whereas water sharing must be organised.
What is the current hydrological situation in France?
Groundwater levels are below normal with 80% moderately low to very low, according to the latest report from the BRGM. The levels are lower than last year at the same time. However, aquifers are the main reservoir that allows waterways to be fed. Evaporation being strong in summer, even if it rains, many rivers will be dry with water tables at their lowest.
