An international seminar and a short film competition and award on hydro-technologies marked the opening of the new office of the Global Network of Water Museums (WAMU-NET) in Trentino, Italy, in the heart of the Alps and the Dolomites, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
On Friday, March 21, as part of a seminar “Water, Resource at Risk? Educating for sustainability between glacier protection and climate change,” held at Palazzo Pizzini in Ala, Trento, the new office of the WAMU-NET Network (UNESCO-IHP ‘flagship initiative’), was inaugurated.
The event, taking place on the eve of World Water Day, welcomed several international guests, and featured the participation of the UNESCO's Paris-based Intergovernmental Hydrological Program (IHP), the UNESCO Regional Office for Science and Culture in Venice, the UNESCO Category 2 Center in Delft IHE, and three UNESCO Chairs. Representatives from museums across Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas spoke at the event, highlighting WAMU-NET's global role in promoting water sustainability education in the era of glacier preservation.
The new WAMU-NET office in Trentino was established thanks to the recent provisions in Trento's provincial law, which allows for the secondment of staff to the network. On this occasion, guitarist and composer Andrea Vettoretti, a leading exponent of the New Classical World genre, was named 'WAMU-NET Ambassador' in recognition of his recent compositions dedicated to the Global Network of Water Museums.
The inauguration of this office reaffirms the importance of water conservation and the need to reduce waste and pollution through behavioral change and greater civil society engagement, starting from the youth. During the seminar, following institutional greetings by Alexander Otte (UNESCO-IHP), Lorenzo Orioli (Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Eddy Moors (Rector of the UNESCO Category 2 Center of Delft), Stefano Gatti (Mayor of Ala), and Claudio Soini (President of the Provincial Council of Trentino), the seminar focused on water and climate change, resource management for the protection of alpine ecosystems and glaciers, and the need to strengthen educational programs to tackle one of the most severe water crises in recent decades.
Contributions to discussions on the World Water Development Report, including topics such as climate change, heritage mapping, and freshwater biodiversity were made by Francesca Bampa (UNESCO Regional Bureau for Science and Culture in Europe), Guido Zolezzi (UNESCO Chair, University of Trento, DICAM), Carola Hein (UNESCO Chair, TU Delft, The Netherlands) and Karl Matthias Wantzen (UNESCO Chair, University of Strasbourg, France).
Experts from the Autonomous Province of Trento also presented insights on the state of water and glaciers in the Alps, alpine wastewater treatment, and the impact of micropollutants on watercourses.
Representatives from WAMU-NET from various countries were given the floor, including Massimo Bernardi and Patrizia Famà (MUSE, Trento), Yongming Chen (National Water Museum of China), Sara Ahmed (Living Waters Museum, India), Alioune Deme (Musée de l'Eau de Dakar, Senegal), Rogerio Rosso (MINA, Brazil) Samoura Alassane (Water Museum of Burkina Faso) and Evelyn Garriga Arias (Instituto Nacional de Recursos Hidraulicos, Cuba).
In the afternoon, the Special Issue of the Blue Papers dedicated to ancestral hydrotechnologies, curated by the UNESCO Chair in Delft, was announced. The event also featured a showcase of the winning short films from the 5th Edition of the youth contest and award "The Water We Want," with participation from schools in Trentino.
The program continued on Saturday 22 and Sunday 23 March, at Harpolab, Trento, with a film review on water and the official launch of the 'Back to Our Future' short film competition, in collaboration with Let's Talk About Water (New York) and the guitarist and composer Andrea Vettoretti. Linda Lilienfeld presented the winners of the “Latin American Award” for short films on water and science, selected from over 200 submissions – a series of vivid accounts combining humour, cinematography and poetry to address the challenges of water in a new and engaging way.
On this occasion, the Global Network of Water Museums presented 'The Voices of Water', a series of eight short films showcasing ancient and ingenious water technologies from around the world: from the evocative terraced landscapes of Bali to those of Cuzco, in Peru, inherited from the Incas and still preserved today by the indigenous populations, to the underground tunnels built in the desert to feed the oases in Morocco and Algeria to the recovery of traditional boats on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Iraq.
Founded in 2017, the Global Network of Water Museums was recognized in 2018 as a 'flagship' project of UNESCO's Intergovernmental Hydrological Program (IHP) through a United Nations Resolution. As such, it is one of UNESCO-IHP's sixteen flagship projects in the world (the only one to be based in Italy). WAMU-NET aims to promote educational activities on sustainable uses of water by focusing on museums and aquatic heritages, both cultural and natural. A steadily growing network, it now includes numerous museums and institutions worldwide (more than 120 members in 44 different countries), which collectively reach a visitor base of about 15 million people a year.