As part of its cooperation with Morocco, the World Bank has published a results profile on the country’s management of water and sanitation. In 2007, through the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), the World Bank granted the country an 18-year development policy loan of $ 100 million. The loan was principally intended to finance a national programme of comprehensive water sector reform, aiming for more efficient and sustainable management of the resource and its related services. Beyond this immediate goal, the seventh Millennium Development Goal, which aims to “halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water”, is therefore also directly at stake.

Integrated and participative management covering entire catchment areas, and more generally the principle of subsidiarity, are presented everywhere as a categorical imperative in water management. The delocalisation of the management of water resources met with consensus at the Istanbul Forum and subsidiarity is obviously an important principle in any concerted, democratic strategy for the management of water resources.

Diane d’Arras is Technology and Research Senior Vice President of SUEZ ENVIRONMENT.

In this interview, she emphasizes the fragility of water and the need to protect it. Thus, wastewater treatment is a crucial issue.
Research is in this field focuses on two main objectives : treatment techniques must be improved and the energy consumption of stations must me reduced.