17 June 2025: working together to face desertification and drought

According to the United Nations, every minute the equivalent of four football pitches is lost due to soil degradation. And sadly, 40% of the world's total land area is already considered to be degraded. This is why it is more urgent than ever to take action against desertification and drought linked to climate change and human activities.

To achieve this, better management of our water resources at all levels is essential. This is precisely the core mission of the International Office for Water, an association recognised as being in the public interest and approved as an ‘Environmental Protection’ body.

Through its 4 complementary areas of expertise, OiEau's 170 experts work every day to improve water management, putting a range of technical, operational, institutional, legal and strategic know-how at the service of a wide variety of customers and partners.

Innovation, whether digital, technical or social, plays a key role in the fight against climate change. At OiEau, it is an integral part of all our strategic thinking, across our 4 areas of expertise.

To anticipate and adapt to the effects of climate change, it has become essential to draw up hydro-climatic projections! This is the aim of two projects supported by the Office International de l'Eau: LIFE Water&Climate and Explore2.

The aim of LIFE Eau&Climat, coordinated by OiEau, was to help those involved in local water resource management to assess the impact of climate change, incorporate it into their planning and implement adaptation measures, using Explore2 data. The latter has produced projections based on 3 IPCC greenhouse gas emission scenarios, which have been broken down into 72 climate projections to produce models and simulations of changes in water resources up to 2100 at national level and by territory.

OiEau has been supporting the deployment of spatial hydrology through its leadership of the French working group on spatial hydrology, known as SWOT, since 2014, and through projects carried out in Africa on the Congo, Niger and Senegal river basins, as well as on the Guyana Plateau in Central America.

Today, the exploitation of remote sensing and the use of automated monitoring sensors provide extremely useful data that complements the ones on the ground, in terms of both quantity (water levels, evaporation, etc.) and quality.

It is an effective decision-making tool for water issues and risk prevention.

To find out more, don't miss our video interview with Blaise DHONT, Project Manager at OiEau:

On a European scale, OiEau is involved in two projects, InnWater and Govaqua, which aim to evaluate and compare different approaches and innovative modes of governance to support and accelerate a transition towards sustainable and equitable water use in Europe, in particular through governance platforms.

On a regional scale, OiEau has developed ProsperEau, a financial analysis and forecasting tool to support medium-sized French local authorities in planning their investments and optimising their financial management, while taking climate change into account.

Absorbing excess water, protecting against storms, strengthening the resilience of ecosystems, etc. The environment is full of natural mechanisms for combating the effects of climate change. Protecting and restoring nature is therefore a sustainable and effective solution.

This is particularly true of wetlands, which provide essential ecosystem services. On this subject, OiEau is helping to run the Wetlands Resource Centre, by taking part in the implementation of the CESP (Communication, Education, Awareness and Participation) strategy, as part of the National Wetlands Plan, by organising awareness-raising events, technical meetings and studies on various subjects, among other things.

Nature-based solutions (NBS)are relevant and sustainable responses to the natural risks exacerbated by climate change. Their aim is to replace or supplement artificial technical solutions with more integrated solutions based on ecosystems.

The NATALIE project aims to test 18 NBS measures in different biogeographical regions of Europe in 10 countries, to help regions and municipalities plan and develop measures to adapt to climate change.

OiEau is also a partner in 2 parallel projects designed to test the “sponge” capacity of soils: SpongeScapes is designed to acquire scientific knowledge, while SpongeWorks aims to demonstrate the large-scale effectiveness of such facilities and encourage their adoption across Europe.

As knowledge of our water resources is essential for efficient decision-making, the collection, analysis, structuring and provision of reliable data and information are at the heart of the OiEau strategy.

Indeed, since its creation, our association has played an active part in making available to the players in the sector (ministries, international organisations, local authorities, water and sanitation utilities, transboundary basin organisations, industry, donors, etc.) methods for measuring, producing and managing reliable data on water resources.

This is the case with the french website https://chiffrecle.oieau.fr/, which provides free access to key figures at French, European and international level, accompanied by their metadata: source, author, date of update, history, etc. With the financial support of the Office Français de la Biodiversité (OFB), they are compiled on the basis of information detected by our experts through regular monitoring!

For more than 15 years, OiEau has been publishing the monthly Hydrological Situation Bulletin, a comprehensive monthly report on the quantitative situation of aquatic environments throughout France, which is used as a decision-making tool by government departments, particularly during hydrological anticipation and monitoring committees.