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All the newsFrom Avignon to Marrakech: IFGR on the road to the COP22
A plea for the deltas
The third international session of IFGR, bearing the COP22 label, was held in Avignon from 11 to 14 October. On this occasion, the 19 representatives of rivers present drafted a plea demanding that concrete commitments be made in favour of deltas. The latter form the front line facing the impacts of climate change. However, they accommodate and give life to 8% of the world’s population (500 million people). Their lands are hit by even more intense pressure (droughts and floods, rising sea water, exploitation of soils, etc.). 150 million climate refugees are forecast in the future.
Convictions and concrete commitments
In particular the panellists were committed to assisting the sharing and dissemination of knowledge on the different themes associated with deltas: climate change and infectious diseases, adapting agriculture to water stress and salinization, and controlling the extraction of natural resources (fossil fuels, water) – one of the main causes of land subsidence. The projects initiated during the session included drafting a manual inventorying the systems capable of measuring the load capacity of deltas. This approach is aimed at evaluating the maximum quantity of activities (tourism, extractions, agriculture, infrastructures, pollution, urbanisation) that can be borne by the environment without it being affected irreversibly.