Urban water scarcity: From nature to politics | 16 December 2021 – 14h30

CEDEJ Environment and Social Policies Seminar Series
Urban water scarcity: From nature to politics

16th of december at 2:30 pm

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Water scarcity is a major challenge for many cities worldwide due to a lack of traditional freshwater resources, rapid urban population growth, and poor water governance practices. Simultaneously, urbanization is emerging as a growing public health concern in developed and developing countries. Nearly half the world’s population now lives in urban settlements (UN, 2010).

This event will explore the integration between water governance, access to water and sanitation, urban inequality, and food security, exploring how the social, political, and ecological come together to shape people’s access to water in cities today and in the future. The event will gather specialists from Egypt, France, and the United States to provide a multi-disciplinary discussion about one of the most pressing issues facing our cities today: How can cities minimize the impacts of water scarcity, and address water and sanitation issues with an integrated approach, in the context of unabated urbanization and inequality in many cities of the world?

About our speakers:

Catherine Baron is Professor of Urban Planning at Science Po Toulouse. She is a specialist of urban water services governance in the Global South and on integrated water resource management, especially in African and Indonesian contexts.
Atika Ben Maid is currently the Head of the Water and Sanitation, Environment, and Sustainable Finance Unit at the Agence Francaise to Developpement in the Cairo office, with an expertise in financing and policy dialogue in the water sector.
Lama El Hatow has 13 years of work experience in the Environmental field, 9 of which are as an Environmental and Social Specialist at IFC (part of the World Bank Group) working on projects in sectors including Manufacturing, Infrastructure, Services and Financial Markets, and a PhD in sustainability from Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands.