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World Water Day:UM Accelerate Change

[] - Published on in Environmental Issues and Social Responsibility, Science and Society

Every year since March 22, 1993, World Water Day has raised awareness about the importance of freshwater. In 2023, the focus is onaccelerating change to meet the UN’s Sixth Sustainable Development Goal: ensuring access to water and sanitation for all by 2030. Scientific research plays a major role in this transformation, and the University of Montpellier—one of the leading international players in water sciences—intends to play its full part. This global day is an opportunity to (re)highlight the work of our researchers through formats tailored to the general public and to demonstrate our university’s commitment to addressing the water challenge.

On June 2, the University of Montpellier and the UNESCO Icireward Center hosted the International Assembly on Hydrological Sciences. On this occasion, Icireward andUM a partnership agreement with the UNESCO Chair “Water, Women, and Decision-Making” and Felix Houphouet Boigny University in Abidjan. In 2023, just a few weeks after hosting the “Water 4 Future” hackathon —which brought together more than 400 international students to tackle major water challenges—we are once again making our mark in the global water sciences ecosystem.

An event in Montpellier echoing the United Nations Water Conference

As the United Nations gathers in New York from March 22 to 24, 2023, to take stock of the international community’s actions on water issues, the UNESCO Icireward Center is organizing two events under the theme: “From New York to Montpellier: All Mobilized for Sustainable Water”:  

  • An awareness-raising day for schoolchildren at the Corum to help the younger generations face the challenges ahead.
  • A public conference titled “Water Resources: Things Are Getting Complicated!” will provide insights into the major challenges facing us, featuring a diverse panel of scientific experts, elected officials, and administrators. It will take place on March 24, 2023, at the School of Law and Political Science.

Water, a major issue regularly featured in theUM’s science-society magazine

“The management of water resources and aquatic ecosystems, which is vital to human beings and their activities, is one of humanity’s major challenges for the21st century…” With these words, Philippe Augé introduced the16th issue of the science-society magazine LUM, “Spotlight on Water” (February–May 2022), which was entirely devoted to water resource management. This theme also appears in the contents of other issues of the magazine, including, for example, the following articles:

"Science atUM" … about water is also available as a podcast

Water is also a topic covered in the podcast series “AUM science,” co-produced with Divergence Radio. This series features our researchers discussing recent scientific publications. Examples of these episodes include:

Share knowledge with The Conversation

The University of Montpellier, a partner of the online general-interest media outlet The Conversation, enables its researchers to publish articles for the general public. They reach a very wide audience, with an average of more than 2 million page views each year. Among them are:

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