‘Water Management: 3 minutes to understand’: a second video focusing on water and sanitation

To mark its 35th anniversary, OiEau has launched a new video series entitled ‘Water Management: 3 Minutes to Understand’, focusing on key issues relating to water management.

With a new episode every two months, this series aims to make the major water issues more accessible, in just a few minutes, to a wide audience comprising both professionals and non-specialists. It forms part of an educational outreach initiative on technical subjects that are often complex.

The first instalment, released last February, was devoted to Integrated Water Resources Management, or IWRM. Presented as a holistic approach to water management, it aims to reconcile different uses, improve the efficiency of the resource and preserve environmental balances, by treating water as a shared heritage to be managed sustainably.

Our second session is devoted to two closely related themes, as they form part of the same cycle: water, which concerns the use of the resource, and sanitation, which ensures its management after use.

Water, essential for the survival of all living beings, whether animal or plant, exists in three states in nature: gaseous, solid and liquid, the latter being the most common form on Earth. Whether it is bottled, recreational, thermal or drinking water, it must meet very strict health standards as soon as it is intended for human consumption.

This health safety is closely linked to sanitation, a process encompassing the collection and treatment of wastewater resulting from human use in the context of vital needs (hydration, hygiene, food) and activities (agriculture, industry, etc.), as well as the management of rainwater, which is often laden with pollutants as it runs off urban surfaces.

Together, access to drinking water and sanitation form a vital cycle for public health, recognised as a human right by the UN since 2010 and enshrined at the heart of Sustainable Development Goal 6 for 2030.

Water and sanitation governance extends far beyond technical considerations to lie at the heart of our societies’ stability, through a range of closely interlinked, multi-dimensional challenges.

From a climate and environmental perspective, the disruption of natural cycles necessitates a transition towards water conservation in the face of dwindling water sources, whilst also requiring adaptation to extreme weather events. Prolonged droughts threaten the availability of water resources, whilst floods overwhelm infrastructure, leading to risks of environmental pollution through overflow.

These environmental pressures echo increasingly stringent health and regulatory requirements, aimed at protecting populations from traditional waterborne diseases whilst meeting stricter European standards, particularly regarding micropollutants and pharmaceutical residues.

At the same time, these quality requirements present major economic challenges, where the high cost of maintaining networks and modernising treatment plants must be balanced by fair pricing, ensuring the service remains accessible to the most vulnerable households whilst meeting the needs of the industrial and energy sectors.

Beyond these technical and financial challenges, access to water embodies a fundamental issue of human dignity and equality. The aim is to guarantee this right to vulnerable populations, to remove the barriers to schooling linked to the burden of water collection—which still weighs heavily on women in many regions—and to resolve territorial tensions arising from competition between different uses of the resource through transparent political governance.

Whilst inequalities in access remain a major global concern, water management is gradually undergoing a strategic shift from supply-side management towards a culture of conservation and circularity.

This turning point is marked by an unprecedented regulatory crackdown on PFAS, with the ban on numerous PFAS-containing products in France driving innovation in advanced filtration technologies.

At the same time, the reuse of treated wastewater (REUSE) is becoming widespread, supported by European funds to replace drinking water in irrigation or industrial processes, thereby preserving strategic reserves.

Regional resilience now relies on Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) at the catchment level, prioritising Nature-based Solutions (NbS). In this regard, the transformation of urban centres into ‘sponge cities’, through the removal of impervious surfaces and the restoration of wetlands, enables the water cycle to be regulated naturally whilst combating heat islands.

As part of its ongoing commitment to supporting stakeholders in the water sector, OiEau applies its expertise through strategic projects addressing resource conservation challenges, amongst which the promotion of Reuse of Treated Wastewater (REUSE) has become a key focus of its activities, particularly for the benefit of the industrial sector. At the heart of this strategy, the promotion of the circular economy for water and TWW is being realised through the management of large-scale industrial and regional demonstration projects, such as the LIFE ZEUS (2020–2026), carried out in partnership with the company Monin, an exemplary initiative aimed at achieving ‘Zero Liquid Discharge’ in the agri-food sector by recycling all process water. OiEau plays a vital role in training teams and consolidating knowledge to facilitate the replication of this model of industrial frugality.

At the same time, the European SOLUCIR project, launched in January 2026 under the auspices of the Horizon Europe program, is focused on deploying decentralised management solutions in peri-urban areas whilst removing the regulatory and economic barriers that still hinder investment in REUSE.

This technical expertise is complemented by a long-standing commitment to Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), a field in which OiEau has established itself as a global leader through its role in running the permanent technical secretariat of the International Network of Basin Organisations (INBO). This governance mission takes the form of targeted international cooperation initiatives, notably in Cambodia with support for the Stung Sen Basin to balance water uses between agricultural needs and ecosystem conservation, or in Madagascar, in the DIANA region, to secure access to drinking water and manage irrigation needs against a backdrop of increasing water stress.

The success of these basin-based management policies depends crucially on the availability of accurate, accessible and interoperable data, a task that OiEau has been fulfilling since 1993 by providing the technical secretariat for SANDRE, which ensures the standardisation of French national reference frameworks for the benefit of agencies, local authorities and researchers.