In line with the collaboration with meteorology and climate communicators, started with the meeting Social perceptions of water and climate held at the Roca Barcelona Gallery last year, the We Are Water Foundation travelled to Paris to take part at the 13th International Weather and Climate Forum, from the 29th to the 31st May. This professional discussion forum aims to disseminate the role played by Meteorology and Climatology as key sciences in the social understanding of climate change. This year´s meeting was influenced by the conclusions of the COP21, the Paris Climate Change Conference, where nearly 200 governments from around the world signed the most important agreement for the future of life on Earth.

The Foundation attended this forum with the aim of collecting and debating ideas so as to be able to communicate the reality of climate change to all citizens, to implicate them in the solutions and to be close to the evolution of the atmospheric sciences, which are the ones that play a key role in the forecasting of the social consequences of climate and meteorological phenomena. The participation of the Foundation and of the weather presenters that accompanied it focused on the international debate “Territories: laboratories of climate change”, where different experiences were presented in the analysis of the socioeconomic consequences of climate change and ideas of mitigation and palliation were debated.

At the meeting it was possible to see that the access to water is already considered in all fields that address the environmental problems as one of the main problems related to climate change. In this sense, the We Are Water Foundation was invited to present the campaign #NoWalking4Water at this meeting. At the headquarters of the French Ministry of the Environment, Energy and the Sea, Carlos Garriga, representing the Foundation, explained to all professionals of the meteorological communication and science the objectives of the campaign, which addresses one of the most offensive dramas of the lack of water around the world: the one experienced by women and girls when they need to collect it. The French Minister of the Environment, Ségolène Royal, showed an interest in the campaign that can be defined as an awareness raising action in order to find solutions to this severe problem.