GOING AGAINST THE FLOW - Introduction
A video series and an investigation on the quality of surface and underground water across the European Union.
Welcome to GOING AGAINST THE FLOW.
I got a PhD in geography in 2012 following three years in the USA. I have been working as an independent journalist and researcher since 2015.
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IN 2017, I COMPLETED AN INVESTIGATION ON THE QUALITY of surface and underground waters across the European Union (EU). I published it on ventdouxprod.com, my blog of independent journalism. I focused on two things:
EU and French laws pertaining to water quality.
Water management on various geographic scale (EU, France, river basin districts, etc.), with a focus on the Artois-Picardie river basin district in northern France (20,000 square kilometers and 4.7 million people).
Why go back on this issue four years later? Mostly because the EU promised to review its major directive on water quality by 2020: the Water framework directive passed in 2000 that all EU member States have to abide by.
I have other incentives to go back on this issue. New data are available about the state of surface and underground waters. Another reason has to do with the ever growing importance of water resources as populations grow, pressures on water increase in countless watersheds and global warming intensifies. In Europe, water quality in our rivers and groundwater, as well as the evolution of water law, tell us almost everything about our economic and political systems, about our relationships with our environment and others. We can simply look at water and its law to understand where we are as human communities.
This investigation and video series are based on a variety of sources, most of which are legal, scientific and journalistic. You can assess their relevance in the text attached to each video.