Presenting at the World Water Congress IAH2024 in Davos, Switzerland, 8-13 September 2024

Just coming back from the World Groundwater Congress IAH2024 held this year in Davos, Switzerland. With 55 parallel sessions, over 1000 participants from more than 80 countries, 14 technical trips to different places in the Alps, tons of social events and evening activities including watching an ice-hockey game (the local team won 5-3!!), a water-tasting contest where I should have received a price for getting ALL the answers wrong, a great gala dinner with excellent Swiss food and videos from water-related expeditions, a photo contest, a very interesting glacier art pavilion “Encounter Iced Sound 2.0” where you could literally "hear" the ice cracking and making noises, and, above all, meeting and reconnecting with so many colleagues and friends from the groundwater community.

On behalf of the IAH Commission on Managed Aquifer Recharge IAH-MAR I chaired the session "4.05 Managed aquifer recharge in modern hydrogeology", an excellent opportunity to get updated on latest progress in MAR research and policy.

I am also thankful to the feedback and appreciation that I received for my talk entitled "Adaptive agreements on benefits sharing for managed aquifer recharge in the Mediterranean region: Development and application of an evidence-based governance framework for managed aquifer recharge". In the presentation I introduced the concept of MAR agreements and shared the latest outcomes of the project AGREEMAR that I am currently coordinating, a PRIMA-funded initiative in collaboration with partners from Portugal, Spain, Tunisia, Cyprus and Germany (read more about our project here: https://www.agreemar.inowas.com).

I am very grateful to the Swiss Society of Hydrogeology (SSH), the Centre for Hydrogeology and Geothermics of the University of Neuchâtel (CHYN) and the International Association of Hydrogeologists (IAH) for the excellent organisation of the conference!!!

Catalin Stefan