Sustainability and hydropolitics in MENA Region. The case of water management in urban areas

Since the 1977 Mar del Plata Conference in Argentina which created an Action Plan on «Community Water Supply» declaring that all peoples have the right to access to drinking water in quantity and quality equal to their basic needs, many (inter)national legislators have ratified water and sanitation targets till the goals, as ambitious as precise, required by the UN Programs for the Millennium De- velopment Goals (2000), and, then, the Sustainable Development Goals (2015). The latest principle of the recognition of water at the core of sustainable develop- ment, as stated in recent agreements such as the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and the 2015 Paris Agreement, stresses that safe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene promote the poverty reduction, strengthen the economic growth, improve educational outcomes, defend dignity and gender equality, in addition to foster the environmental sustainability. Therefore, the water manage- ment represents a typical case of study to test the integration of the development goals and, above all, the effective, composite, meaning of sustainability when applied to the development.