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| Prof. Llamas speaking about water ethics, March 2014 |
Today (November 17) the Botin Foundation is hosting a celebration in Madrid to honor the career of Prof. Ramon Llamas, long-time director of the Foundation's Water Observatory, and an early and passionate advocate for water ethics. Prof. Llamas was co-chair of the UNESCO-COMEST initiative on Water and Ethics from 1998-2004, authoring a report on Groundwater Ethics. His interests in ethics were practical; he worked to solve problems of unsustainable water use by identifying basic principles that can lead to more sustainable management (See the Valencia Declaration Annex in his Groundwater report).
After the UNESCO program on water and ethics ended in 2004, Prof. Llamas, in his capacity as director of the Botin Water Observatory, sponsored two important symposia on water ethics, which served to maintain a momentum of interest in the topic, within the global water community. In 2007, the Observatory hosted a workshop on Water Ethics in Santander, Spain, with the papers published in 2009 under the title, Water Ethics, edited by Prof. Llamas along with Luis Martinez-Cortina and Aditi Mukherji.
A workshop on water ethics and food security followed in 2010, with the papers published in a special issue of the journal, Water Policy in 2012 under the title, "The Role of Ethics in the Globalization of Water and Food" All the papers from this issue are available for download on the website of the Water Ethics Network.
My own interaction with Prof. Llamas started during the 2012 World Water Forum in Marseille, where we were each involved in separate sessions on water ethics, and discussed how we might collaborate. The opportunity came the following year when the French Water Academy, UNESCO-IHP, Botin Foundation, and Water-Culture Institute began to develop the idea of a global Water Ethics Charter. This initiative has since attracted wide interest, and is the subject of a new book, Global Water Ethics: Towards a Global Ethics Charter.
The blogpost I am writing now, the website and social media sites of the Water Ethics Network, and the initiative to develop a global water ethics charter, would probably not exist without the influence and involvement of Prof. Llamas. Thank-you, Ramon, for your passion, your insights, and your leadership in promoting the study and practice of water ethics!
- David Groenfeldt
Water-Culture Institute
