Rural migration in developing countries, in addition to the natural expansion of the population, is an additional challenge in the management of drinking water. An eloquent example is that of the population of Bamako (Mali), which has nearly doubled in ten years, representing an annual increase of some 90,000 new inhabitants.

For Alain Supiot, Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies (IEA) in Nantes, research in the social sciences can be of considerable use to companies of global scope and scale – in particular, as a means of setting up dialogue between the world of action and that of research.