Adapting agriculture to water scarcity: Academic Seminar at Louvain University to commemorate World Food Day

FAO Brussels  participated and moderated an academic seminar organized by UC Louvain on the occasion of World Food Day 2023.

FAO Brussels welcomed the participants together with Marnik Vanclooster, Head of the Earth and Life Institute at UCLouvain and UNESCO's Europe Director Louise Haxthausen, who opened the event  stressing the importance of water equity  and highlighting FAO’s efforts to combat water scarcity around the globe. Professor Marnik Vanclooster the event's main organiser from UCLouvain and UNESCO's Europe Director Louise Haxthausen offered introductory remarks to the seminar attended by more than 100 students. “3.5 billion people live in water stress at least one month a year. At UNESCO, we found that cooperation between cities and their surrounding agricultural communities is essential for fair and sustainable water allocation, even more so in areas that are more prone to water scarcity.”.

Presentations were given by professors from Belgian Universities at the two sessions that followed, with the first looking at the Belgian context of water use, and the second focusing on the global water situation.

The event was co-organized by UCLouvain, Circle U. European University Alliance, Agro-Louvain, Earth and Life Institute, Louvain4Water, and UNESCO- IHP Belgium. 

The video recording and the presentations of the event can be found here.

To learn more about the 2023 World Food Day, click here. 

To find out more about FAO’s work on water, visit this website. 

To learn more about the Global Framework on Water Scarcity in Agriculture (WASAG), visit this website.