CIPRA Annual Special Conference/Symposium: “The Alps as a Water Trough”

 The “blue gold” of the Alps is limited in quantity and thus in high demand for use as drinking water, snow or electricity. At its Annual Special Conference in Bozen/Bolzano in October, CIPRA will be asking who has the right to this elixir of life and who has responsibility for it.

The glaciers, springs, streams, rivers and lakes of the Alps provide water to 170 million people. This valuable substance is also indispensable for agriculture, tourism and leisure, nature and the landscape, not to mention energy production. Interest in this scarce resource is enormous: but who gives, who takes and who decides over the water trough provided by the Alps?

It is ten years since CIPRA submitted to the Alpine countries its proposal for a water protocol. Yet today there is no common legal basis for the use and protection of water in the Alps. At its Annual Special Conference/Symposium, to be held at the European Academy in Bozen/Bolzano from 10 to 12 October in the International Year of Water Co-Operation, CIPRA will be giving centre stage to the responsibility for the blue gold of the Alps. How do municipalities co-operate in water management? How will society deal with the causes and consequences of climate change? Who decides in which streambed water or hydropower should flow? What is needed to make politicians and citizens take sustainable action? Narratives will include approaches to the Rhine, the largest river in the Alps, and accounts from Annecy, the city with the cleanest lake in Europe. There will also be field trips organised to demonstrate how South Tyrol deals with its water.

Programme and registration at: www.cipra.org/fr/