Agenda

The collaboration between THE NEW INSTITUTE Centre for Environmental Humanities (NICHE), the UNESCO Chair on Water, Heritage and Sustainable Development, the ERC project ‘The Water Cultures of Italy, 1600-1800 and the Global Network of Water Museums designed the project 'Valuing Ancient Water Cultures – An inspiring source of innovations for Sustainable Water Management’.

The project will be presented at the UN-Water Summit on Groundwater (Paris, 6-8 Dec.) and consists of three activities:

• a side-event (6 December from 12 to 1pm – Venue: Room XI) involving experts from different disciplines that will discuss how traditional knowledge, techniques, and social management of groundwater represent an inspiring source of innovations for future resilience planning.
• a visit to the Musée des Egouts de Paris (6 December) 
• an exhibition (Vernissage: 7 December at 4pm, in conjunction with the official coffee break of the Summit). Eight case studies from Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America highlight how ancient hydro-technologies can contribute to the targets of the UN’s SDGs.

The three planned activities aim at providing answers to questions like: how can ancient groundwater management and practices inspire institutions and policy makers to address the current sustainability challenges? What lessons do ancestral hydro-technologies offer for future resilience planning?
These activities aim at stressing the relevance of ancient groundwater management practices and farsighted visions to foster new ideas for future resilience planning and highlight the role that water museums play to make ‘the invisible visible’.

The detailed program of the UN-Water Summit is available here.

The side-event will be held in hybrid modality.
Online pre-registrations through the WHOVA platform is mandatory; then, to follow the event you can directly connect to the Summit online portal from this link.