[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] Water and adaptation to climate change. The need to adapt ensures that water is included in climate negotiations. However, I do want to illustrate how difficult it was for water to be included in these negotiations. Indeed, despite the fact that Article 4 of the Framework Convention on Climate Change demands that all States cooperate on the development of water resource adaptation plans, the difficulty to implement these adaptation plans is evident particularly on transboundary water resources. So for my first point, we will look at these difficulties. If you read the Paris Declaration adopted at COP21 in December 2015, if you read the text, you will find that water is not explicitly mentioned. Does this mean that water was not considered in the climate negotiations? No. In fact, the statement refers to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) where Objective 6 is dedicated to water. Reading the preamble of the Paris Declaration, human rights are mentioned. And you know that water is an essential part of human rights. Through these implicit mentions, water is therefore included in the text of the Paris Declaration. But there are issues, challenges that are related to this, to the involvement of water in climate change, especially concerning finance. In 2005, an adaptation fund was created however the fund has weak governance. Developing countries can ask, can submit projects, directly to the fund but there has been a whole series of difficulties due to the fact that the fund is financed by an international tax taken from the credits of the Clean Development Mechanism. The first agreement was only reached in 2011 (with Senegal). There is another fund, the Green Climate Fund and that is an important resource for adaptation measures. In fact, this fund allocates its resources equally to mitigation, to the reduction of CO2 emissions, and to adaptation measures. So we can see these two challenges. The difficulty of including water into climate negotiations, particularly in the Paris Declaration, and the need for financial resources that are not easily accessible in the context of the adaptation to climate change. So I move to my second point. Here it is necessary to introduce transboundary water resource management and adaptation measures. So how do we interpret adaptation and transboundary water resources? On the sidelines of the climate negotiations in Paris, the Paris Pact on adaptation was adopted which dealt with transboundary water resources. The pact was promoted by the International Network on Basin Organizations, INBO, and there were around 200 signatories made up of governments, international organizations and non-governmental organizations. A pioneering role in the implementation of adaptation plans on transboundary water resources was played by the Convention of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, the Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes. Here for the first time, in 2009, the guidelines on water and climate change adaptation were adopted. And these guidelines were adopted by the parties, and its text provides a reference framework not only for the States Parties to the Convention but also for other States. As we know, the UNECE Water Convention has a global scope and therefore all States who are members of the United Nations can accede to this Convention. Secondly, I draw your attention to the establishment of a Task Force on Water and Climate Change which happened in 2007 and then the adoption within the Protocol on Water and Health of the Guidelines on access to water and sanitation when extreme weather events occur. There were a number of important pilot projects supported by the secretariat of the Water Convention. In particular, the pilot projects on the Chu-Talas River in Central Asia, (shared between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan) and also on the Danube and Sava. So who funds these climate change adaptation measures when it concerns a transboundary water resources? This is the real challenge. Indeed, projects were mainly local and national. Most of these local and national projects mention water but always within a national context and the difficulty arises when international players like the World Bank are involved. In 2014, the World Bank established a global water practice but financing projects on a transboundary basin was difficult because of the lack of agreement between the riparian states. So this is a challenge. I would like to conclude with some initiatives on transboundary water resources that were also supported by the secretariat of the Water Convention. The first example is an initiative and an action plan that was adopted by the Mekong River Commission. Various factors were taken into account by the Commission, including ecosystems, biodiversity, food security, but also socio-economic variables. Another very important example is the Danube Commission and the Sava River Commission which have adopted action frameworks designed to deal with flood prevention. Finally I would like to mention a case in Latin America on a river shared between Peru and Ecuador, which shows the importance of exchange of data and information between riparian States, and this, in my opinion, is really the starting point for the implementation of adaptation measures on transboundary water resources. MUSIC