Simon Porcher, economist. “Conflicts over access to water will unfortunately increase in France”

Will there be a shortage of drinking water in the near future? The question arises as droughts multiply around the world, even in Europe and France, where the Pyrenees-Orientales are experiencing an unprecedented and catastrophic situation. Simon Porscher, Professor of Management Sciences at Panthéon-Assas University in Paris, publishes The end of the water ?, a well-documented book on this complex but so important topic of blue gold management. There is no inevitability to it, there are solutions to better share this essential common good.

Madame Figaro. – How expensive is fresh water? ?
Simon Porcher. – We are talking about the blue planet, we have the impression that water is everywhere, abundant. But 97.5% of this water is salty because it is ocean and sea water. What little fresh water remains is mostly in the form of glaciers. Thus, fresh water in its liquid, usable and available form is only 0.5% of the Earth’s water. However, this is essential for life, human dignity and public health, as well as for agriculture, industry and the economy. In many developing countries, this is often rare and access to potable water is not guaranteed. As a result, unsafe water intake is the leading cause of preventable death worldwide. and a child under the age of 5 dies from it every eighty seconds, mostly in Africa.

The risk of water scarcity only affects poor or dry countries. ?
No, and we are beginning to realize it. In our industrialized countries we are used to having access to water in every home, the drinking water supply networks are so reliable that they have become invisible, even literally, because they are underground. Because of this, water is little known and undervalued, relatively cheap. We don’t know how much we consume or how much we pay for it. We have forgotten that it can be unavailable, cut off, poor quality or rationed. But with the droughts of recent years, in the United States or in Europe, we realize that water shortages can also affect industrialized and fairly humid countries like France, where many departments have water restrictions in 2022 and 2023, while more than a thousand municipalities : had supply failures.

How to explain this? ?
This is mainly due to global warming which alters the rainfall pattern. These are more vague. A lot of rain can fall in a very short time, and droughts are longer and more frequent. In a kind of vicious cycle, parched soils can no longer absorb water and force it to flow into the groundwater, worsening the drought but also flooding. Add the fact that the human population is growing and consuming more and more water… and the imbalance between supply and demand is growing.

Which activities use the most water? ?
Consumption must be different from collection. Consuming water means that it does not return to the natural environment, like what we drink or what plants absorb. Agriculture is the largest consumer of water in the world. But it’s not the activity that takes the most. In France, 50% of water intake is used for cooling nuclear power plants. Like the water from our showers, it returns to nature.

Can we fear an increase in conflicts over access to water in France? ?
Unfortunately, yes. Because according to Météo France, by 2050 there will be 10% less precipitation in summer in mainland France. And the resource will be distributed more and more unevenly, there will be fairly stable precipitation in the north, but it will decrease in the Mediterranean basin. This will create conflicts between different users, individuals vs. farmers, farmers vs. industrialists, farmers vs. farmers, etc. We are already seeing tensions around certain golf course or mega pool projects such as those in Saint-Saolin, Dos-Sèvres.

Why do these mega-basins cause so much opposition? ?
Compared to other reservoirs that collect rain, for example, the idea is to pump liquid directly into groundwater in the winter to irrigate crops in the summer. This raises several questions. Water stored in the open in this way evaporates and is exposed to microbes, while it is protected in the tablecloth. Second, this supports intensive agriculture dependent on irrigation. It is a form of “non-adaptation” to climate change that is not sustainable in the long term. Conflicts over mega-basins reveal the opposition of two worldviews. those who believe that we will find technical solutions so that nature continues to adapt to our use, and those for whom we should rather adapt to the resource by reducing our consumption.

Are technical solutions unreliable? ?
Yes, but on a small scale. For example, sea desalination can only work in coastal areas and is expensive, energy intensive and polluting. Rainwater harvesting should not be done to the detriment of fauna and flora and seems to me to be quite suitable for urban areas. We can capture fogs, but it can only supply mountain villages or arid regions like the Chilean desert. As for the reuse of treated wastewater, in France it occurs for watering golf courses or cleaning roads. In the absence of water, these solutions will develop, but will remain localized, a minority, and will not be able to replace groundwater. Neither will be a miracle solution.

Due to the drought in Europe in recent years, we realize that water shortages can also affect industrialized countries such as France.

Simon Porcher

So what do you recommend? ?
The key is to act on demand to waste less water and make it less polluted. It is possible! First, the topic should become a political priority. Because it is a global common good, there should be a global freshwater treaty and a special UN institution. But as water is shared among local users, there is also a need to democratize governance in each area and better involve citizens. Reinventing the economic model of water also seems key, so that drinking water services are no longer paid by the volume sold, encouraging overconsumption, but for example, according to the network leakage reduction, which France urgently needs to repair, 20% of drinking water is lost this way.

What are the actions to be taken?
Each French person uses 150 liters of drinking water per day. If it is much less than the American one, we can reduce by another 10%, being a little careful, the faucets with fans… And we can play on our “water footprint” which is consumed by the products we buy through: 5000 liters. a day for a Frenchman! It takes over 500 liters to produce a steak, 3000 for a t-shirt… This needs to be shown to guide us, like calories.