Watarid 3: Uses and policies of water

 The third Watarid conference “Watarid 3: Uses and policies of water” will be held in France from May 30th to June 5th, 2011. The guest country is EGYPT.

 Even today, very few research programs on the issues and challenges of water associate social sciences (geography, urbanism, architecture, political science, law, sociology, history…), physical sciences, natural sciences (chemistry, hydrology, hydraulics, biology…) or engineering sciences. As a matter of fact, interdisciplinary approaches are not very common. And few international programs relate to the analysis of the technical, institutional, political and social challenges in varied regional contexts.

 The series of international conferences “Water, ecosystems and sustainable development” held by the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (EPHE) and the Universities of Xinjiang (China) and Tehran (Iran), two great universities specializing in the study of arid zones, hope to contribute to the debates originated within the framework of important international conferences and programs on water and the contemporary environmental challenges in the world.

 This third conference hopes to increase the awareness of the international scientific community towards this holistic approach in order to incorporate the themes, methods and experiences of the previous meetings for better water resource management in arid and semi-arid regions. The issues of access to water, its uses, its management and its preservation will be at the heart of this meeting. The conference is largely open to research scientists and engineers, as well as professionals and decision makers in the water field.

 You will find all information related to the conference on the website http://watarid.aquitaine.cnrs.fr (the information is available in French, English, Persian and very soon in Chinese). The paper or poster proposals must be submitted before September 30th 2010.