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Ambition and missions

IFGR was founded in 2015, the year of COP21 and the Paris Agreement which linked climate and the oceans together for the first time thanks to a simple observation: rivers remain little known and are even ignored whereas they render essential services to societies; and a conviction: the need to develop rivers in a reasoned and environmentally friendly way to ensure a sustainable future.


The future of rivers is the future of life!

No water, no life! Rivers, essential reserves of accessible fresh water, more than ever reflect the many challenges that confront societies regarding their food security, health, electricity, mobility and the preservation of biodiversity.

Victims of anthropic pressure and the impacts of climate change, these ecosystems are fragile. Poorly managed, they become a source of conflicts and are no longer vectors of solidarity and development. Often faced with difficulties everywhere in the world, rivers nonetheless provide the solutions for tomorrow.

The future of life on Earth therefore strongly depends on the future of rivers, and more specifically our relationship with them. Our responsibility consists in both preserving this common good that we, human beings, exploit for different purposes (energy, transport, industry, agriculture, leisure), and reconciling their uses, in order to ensure that the services rendered by rivers benefit the greatest number and durably, while creating value there where it does not yet exist.


Our missions

 IFGR is positioned usefully and efficiently at the interface between major coalitions of actors to resituate rivers at the heart of global challenges and find solutions, by studying and experimenting with them.

An organisation of reference in the general interest for sustainable river management, IFGR acts as a whistle-blower to sound the alarm and spread awareness; an international forum on which knowledge and practises are exchanged to enrich and share; a facilitator of solutions formulated collectively, from the local to the international scale, to make progress in our relations with rivers.


Its 4 missions to achieve this ambition:

  1. Collective reflection and exchanging knowledgeDevelop a network of knowledge, experiences and practises based on rivers.
  2. Dialogue and meetingsMake as many people as possible aware of the essential role played by rivers to strengthen community commitment and encourage public debate.
  3. Warning and cooperatingInform and assist decision-makers to associate them in our actions and give them the resources with which to act.
  4. Co-develop solutionsEncourage experimentation and innovation, and aid the diffusion of concrete and reproducible solutions for rivers.

 


Further information


Our values

  • Respect: rivers are living entities that human beings have always lived close to and exploited. All the dimensions of the many interactions between human beings and the ecosystem must be understood without bias to favour harmonious relations between rivers and societies, and serve in the interest of all.
  • Opening: only a multidisciplinary and international approach is capable of bringing together and comparing knowledge and experiences in order to generate sustainable responses.
  • Joint construction: to act rapidly and efficiently, actions must be deployed at different levels: alliances must be forged and common messages relayed with other actors involved in the areas of water, biodiversity and the climate at the national and the international scales; the territories must be assisted to make their transitions at the local scale.

 


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